


i need a little love (to ease the pain)

by star_sky_earth



Series: sleep [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: And the tiniest amount of pregnancy kink, Body Image, Body Worship, Brother/Sister Incest, Consent Issues, Dirty Talk, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Incest, Multi, Praise Kink, Pseudo-Incest, References to Somnophilia, The 100 (TV) Kink Meme, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-08 15:44:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17983985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/star_sky_earth/pseuds/star_sky_earth
Summary: The morning after the night before, Bellamy’s in the kitchen making coffee. Or rather, trying to make coffee. Every stage of the process is taking twice as long as usual, hampered by both exhaustion and a nervous, crackling energy that makes his hands shake at inopportune moments. His head is pounding, like he’s just woken up from a three day bender.Or, like he’s just woken up from tricking his little sisters into fucking him while he pretended to sleep.-It's the weekend after the night before, and no one's going to come out of this well.





	i need a little love (to ease the pain)

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes!
> 
> 1\. This is two (and a half) weeks later than I planned, but it's super long so I hope that makes up for it! Despite the delay I had so much fun writing this instalment, so I'm curious to see if that translates.
> 
> 2\. I would highly recommend reading the first two works in this series before reading this - not only because otherwise this may make very little sense, but because it'll give you a good idea of what you're in for in terms of content warnings and themes. Be kind to yourself, be responsible for yourself.
> 
> 3\. A final note - Clarke has some body insecurity in this one (she's fifteen! it happens!) It's pretty mild but just a disclaimer that OBVIOUSLY the things she thinks about her body are in no way a reflection of reality. Eliza Taylor is a very beautiful, very tiny girl who deserves nothing but unconditional love (as do we all).

Bellamy has never slept well, trained from an early age to wake up at the slightest sound from Octavia. His sleeping habits, as with everything else about him, have formed to meet his sister’s every need, like a vine growing around a frame.

\- 

The morning after the night before, Bellamy’s in the kitchen making coffee. Or rather, trying to make coffee. Every stage of the process is taking twice as long as usual, hampered by both exhaustion and a nervous, crackling energy that makes his hands shake at inopportune moments. His head is pounding, like he’s just woken up from a three day bender. 

Or, like he’s just woken up from tricking his little sisters into fucking him while he pretended to sleep.

It had taken him hours to get to sleep last night after Octavia and Clarke had left him. He’d dragged himself to his bedroom and laid there in the dark, replaying each touch and shiver and bitten off sigh, Clarke’s gentle hands and Octavia’s ravenous mouth and the breathless space in between. Around 4am he’d sacrificed the last scraps of his dignity and jerked off to an unsatisfying climax, tracing and retracing all the minor details that he worried would fade all too soon, a vain attempt to etch them into his brain. He’d never felt like such a creep, cock in hand, trying to memorise the noise that Clarke made when she came. Sweat soaked and ashamed, he’d finally dropped off into a restless slumber just as the grey dawn light started to creep in through the window, only to wake two hours later anyway.

He feels strung out, wrestling with all the things that he’s done and somehow not done, the missing pieces and dropped stitches that distort the experience until it seems as much _nothing_ as _something_. One step forward, one step back.

He doesn’t know what Clarke’s skin feels like under his hands, has never had her taste on his tongue. Has never seen her naked. 

Bellamy has taken his girl’s virginity, but they’ve never even kissed.

It feels like a major life achievement when he finally wrestles the coffeemaker into submission, pours himself the strongest cup of coffee he can stomach. It’s bitter when he sips it, burns when it goes down. He could do with something a bit stronger, if he’s honest with himself.

He leans against the sagging kitchen counter cupping the hot mug in his hands, eyes the clock with bleary eyes. Feels his pulse kick up a beat.

7.00am 

It’s around this time that he usually hears the quiet, shuffling sounds of Clarke sneaking out of the room she shares with his sister, still sleepy eyed and clumsy from sleep. This is the best part of his weekends - the sound of Octavia’s bedroom door softly _snicking_ shut, anticipation fizzing in his stomach as he waits for Clarke to get done with her morning ablutions and find him in the kitchen. He loves seeing Clarke in the morning when she first wakes up. Fuzzy headed and weak limbed, yawning wide, flashes of bright white teeth and pink tongue. She’s usually still half asleep when she joins him, and it makes him warm inside to think that she seeks him out automatically, operating on an instinctual level beneath conscious thought or desire.

This morning the anticipation is even more urgent. He needs to see Clarke, needs to reassure himself that last night was real, match up the shadowy recollections in his head with the reality of a flesh and blood girl in front of him. Set her smile, her voice, her laughter - the undeniable her - against all the doubt in his mind.

7.05am 

Bellamy turns and fills the kettle with water, puts it on a burner to heat up for Clarke’s morning tea. He gets out her favourite cup - pale green with white polka dots and a chip on the handle - pops the tea bag in, fetches the milk from the refrigerator. Lays the teaspoon down next to the cup. Adjusts it with the tip of his index finger, back and forth, until it sits at the perfect angle. 

The trivial tasks give him something to do. Something to focus on to try and stop his heart from beating out of his chest.

Clarke hates coffee to the level of absurdity, starts every morning by wrinkling her nose at the scent, pouting every time he takes a sip. It’s the only time when she reminds him of Octavia. Bellamy smiles to himself at the thought of it. He can’t believe that Clarke, his all-American dream girl, hates coffee. It’s plain unpatriotic. See something, say something behaviour.

He wonders if she could get over her aversion, if they got together. Would she be more amenable to the taste of coffee if it was accompanied by a kiss, his hand on her hip, a good morning greeting whispered against her lips? Or will she always hate it? Ten, twenty years from now, will this be their morning ritual - her wrinkled nose, a half-hearted protestation, finally allowing him a kiss because she can’t fathom starting her day without it?

He looks up to check the clock again. 

7.10am

Despite his romantic daydreams, Bellamy holds no illusions about what’s going to happen when he sees Clarke. He knows that neither of them can openly acknowledge what took place last night, the seismic shift in their relationship that’s left the ground unsteady under both their feet. The main danger is past, but the aftershocks, the consequences of mutual discovery, would still be violent enough to tear them all apart. Here, in the cold, harsh light of day, nothing has changed. Nothing can change.

But even if he can’t give any indication that anything is different, isn’t allowed to pull her into his arms and kiss her good morning - he can still look into her eyes and see the truth reflected there, just as he did with Octavia.

Look into Clarke’s eyes and see that what happened meant something to her, that he’s gotten under her skin as much as she’s got under his.

7.15am 

Bellamy sits at the small kitchen table and waits for her, drums his fingers. Finishes his coffee and pours himself another cup, one eye on the clock, one ear listening for the sound of her footsteps.

The kettle whistles. The clock ticks on.

But there’s no sign of Clarke.

\- 

Clarke doesn’t wake up. 

To wake up would imply that she’d been asleep. That she hasn’t spent the last five hours staring blindly up into a dark room, listening to the faint snuffling snores of her best friend beside her, anxiety building until it felt like she was being crushed under the weight of it.

The regret had started creeping in almost immediately last night - the sharp euphoria of her orgasm draining away while she was still on top of Bellamy, his cock softening inside her. Her thighs had still been trembling, her rapid heartbeat still echoing through her body, when she felt the initial uneasiness, the sinking feeling that she’d done something terribly, awfully wrong. Something irrevocable.

There’d been no peace for her after they got back to their room. Octavia had fallen asleep right away, conscience as clear as her untroubled face, but for Clarke the night had stretched out, cold and unforgiving and infinite, forcing her to examine what she’d done, in stark and unflinching detail. 

She’s ruined everything. Taken advantage of Bellamy, trampled whatever fragile and impossible thing had been growing between them. Stolen their first time together. Destroyed any chance they ever had for anything real.

Why did she do it?

Her first impulse - the life ring that she’s always clung to whenever anything goes wrong - was to blame her best friend. Everything was always Octavia’s fault. It had been that way since they were both little, a practiced excuse that’s served Clarke well through a lifetime of shared mischief, from stolen cookies and broken glassware to missed curfews and alcohol snuck from liquor cabinets. Of all of Octavia’s advantages as a friend, one of the most valuable has always been her endless ability to absorb blame, the way she shrugs and accepts shifted responsibility with all the nihilistic grace of someone who knows that nothing really matters anyway. 

Last night was Octavia’s fault. Clarke would never have left their bedroom if she hadn’t led her by the hand, would never have touched Bellamy without the encouraging smile of her best friend. Would never have fucked her brother, if her sister hadn’t done it first. Octavia has always had a hold over Clarke, an uncanny ability to lead her astray with nothing more than a grin and a cocked eyebrow. 

Clarke desperately wants to blame Octavia. It would be such a neat resolution - assign the blame to her best friend, lock the guilt and the responsibility and her own actions away, leave the rest of her life unaffected and unexamined. Pristine. Contain the flames and destruction, rather than let the shame spread through her like wildfire.

But this time, for the first time, the excuse won’t hold. It disintegrates. Slips through her fingers and leaves Clarke flailing, drowning in brutal self-awareness. 

Maybe this is what growing up feels like, the realisation that you have no one to blame for your actions but yourself. 

She looks at Octavia, sound asleep in the fledgling light of early morning, face half buried in the pillow, dark hair tangled and wild. As Clarke watches, Octavia sighs, a shimmer of a smile playing across her face. She looks so much younger like this.

(Clarke pushes away an unwelcome flashback to Bellamy’s sleeping face. The two siblings look so alike when they sleep.)

Asleep, Octavia looks exactly like what she is. A fifteen year old girl, just like Clarke, stumbling her way through the cruel landscape of high school and adolescence, caught up in a mindless cycle of action and reaction and unrelenting hormones. Not a god with the ability to control Clarke’s actions. Not a force of nature sweeping everyone along in her wake. Just a teenage girl.

Octavia grumbles, shifts closer to Clarke, her little bird frame almost buried under the heaping blankets except for one delicate shoulder that peeks out above the sheets. Clarke reaches out and pull the sheets up to cover her. Octavia gets cold easily. 

Last night wasn’t Octavia’s fault. Clarke has wanted Bellamy - desperately, hopelessly, pointlessly - for months. Long, frustrated months full of stuttered words, furtive looks and wasted chances. An endless stalemate that left her with nothing but wet panties and heartache.

Octavia didn’t force Clarke into anything. All she did was show Clarke an opportunity to get what she wanted. And Clarke took it. 

After all, isn’t that what Octavia has always done? Call it what you like - a push, an excuse, permission - but Octavia has always given Clarke something that she can’t get anywhere else. The freedom to be bad, the chance to indulge the little dark secret part of herself that lusts and covets and _wants_. A way to be bad and stay good at the same time, as long as Octavia sticks around to take responsibility for it.

It’s the unwritten rule of their relationship. Clarke gets her hands dirty, and Octavia washes them clean again. But not this time. 

Clarke has done something unforgivable and the truth is that she did it because she wanted to. 

She wanted to touch Bellamy. Wanted to know what it would feel like to be with him. Wanted it enough that she didn’t care how it happened, didn’t even care about him, not really, only cared about satisfying the urge inside her, the twisting need for him that’s been chasing her through endless sleepless nights for months. 

And the worst part. The truly horrible and unforgivable thing is - she stills wants to. Because even with all the guilt and the remorse and the regret that’s got her by the throat - Clarke still wants Bellamy. 

She’s wet, thighs damp and tacky and sticking together, and it’s not just from his come that’s still dripping out of her (although the thought makes her pussy clench and her fingers itch with a need to reach down and feel it). If Clarke closed her eyes, allowed herself to relax for even a second, she knows that she’d replay every moment, every sound and sensation until the memory wore through, like rolling stolen candies over her tongue until they dissolved. The feel of Bellamy inside her, the bulk of his body between her legs, that one exhilarating second when his mouth opened in pleasure and she could pretend that he was there with her. The sheer pure joy of getting just what she’d wanted for so long.

Does remorse count for anything if you know that, given the chance, you’d do it all over again?

He’s out there waiting for her. She can hear him moving in the kitchen, setting up for their usual weekend morning routine. The high-pitched whistle of the kettle, the clatter of drawers and cupboard doors, the squeaking drag of a chair across the floor. Poor Bellamy, unsuspecting, so kind and good under his bravado, his big brother teasing.

How can Clarke face him, thighs still sticky and mind full of stolen memories, and pretend that nothing has changed? Let him call her _princess_ , let him look at her with his adoring, overflowing eyes because he still thinks that she’s his good girl? 

How can she face him, his taste still lingering on her tongue, and not want him again?

\- 

Octavia wakes up around 10am. The room is blazing bright with the late morning sun, almost too warm where they lie under the covers, legs entwined. 

Clarke hasn’t moved an inch. She feels shattered. Exhausted. She’s needed to pee for at least an hour, but she can’t bring herself to get up. Getting up feels like accepting this horrible new world, a world in which Bellamy is lost to her, and she refuses.

The kitchen has long since gone quiet. She hasn’t heard Bellamy for hours, but she hasn’t heard him leave the house either.

“Mmm…” Octavia hums as she opens her eyes. “Morning.”

If Octavia looked calm and unaffected last night, this morning she’s glowing. Her eyes are bright, skin luminous, grin wide and carefree. She stretches, all four limbs splaying out across the bed until her joints crack and she wriggles back down under the sheets with a sigh, luxurious and self-satisfied. 

She reminds Clarke of a lioness after a kill. Sleepy, indulgent. Lazing in the hot sun, dark red blood still staining her muzzle, flesh from some unknown creature’s heart still caught in her teeth.

Doesn’t Octavia feel any regret? Does she even know that what they did was wrong? Does she care?

How can she be so calm, when Clarke feels like _this_?

Octavia turns to her, body curling up, cold feet seeking out Clarke’s warmth. They’re eye to eye, inches apart on one shared pillow, just like they’ve been so many times before. 

Nothing’s changed, except everything.

Clarke feels like she’s on display as her best friend examines her, eyes flickering over her face like she’s checking her for injury. She wonders what Octavia sees, if she can see past Clarke’s blank face to the turmoil of her thoughts. She wants to turn away, but she knows that to do so would reveal more about her than any facial expression ever could. 

Octavia reaches up and tucks Clarke’s hair behind her ear, fingers lingering on her skin, a familiar caress. 

“You look tired. How do you feel?”

Clarke feels the heat rising in her face. She resists the urge to fidget now that she’s been reminded of the stickiness between her legs, her need to pee. She clears her throat. “A bit sore.” 

“Hmm,” Octavia draws out the sound, considering. She lets her hand fall back to the covers, settling back into the pillow. She’d look perfectly relaxed if not for the keenness of her gaze, eyes never leaving Clarke’s face. “You should have a shower. The hot water helps, trust me.” 

The last bit is delivered with a hint of a leer, one of Octavia’s sharp eyebrows ticking upwards for a fraction of an instant. The lioness may be satisfied for now, but she’s still got bite. 

Clarke doesn’t want the images that flash through her mind. Octavia on the very first morning after, waking up in this bed, rolling over to bury her smile in the pillows. Octavia in the shower, humming absently as she soaps up and lets everything wash away. Octavia on top of Bellamy, body arching, head tilting back, long dark hair rippling over pale skin, dappled in shadow. 

_Is that what you did, the first time you fucked him?_

Clarke nods. A lump rises in her throat, but she swallows it back down. 

“And how do you _feel_ feel?” Octavia prods, leaning up on her elbow over Clarke. Her face lights up with excitement, eager for details.

Just two best friends bonding over their first times. 

“I don’t know,” Clarke chokes out, voice just this side of wobbly. 

It’s more truth than lie, even if it’s not the whole truth. 

Octavia nods, but Clarke can see the questions swirling behind her eyes, mouth already opening to press her for more.

Clarke can’t bear it for another second. She springs into action, throws back the covers and scrambles out of bed. Her body twinges at the quick movement but she stubbornly sets the feeling aside to deal with later, when she’s alone.

She doesn’t turn around to look at Octavia when she speaks, doesn’t want to see the look on her friend’s face. 

“I’m going to go and shower.”

\- 

Clarke was twelve when she had her first kiss. 

It had been an unusual night for many reasons, not the least of which that she’d spent it with her mom, Bellamy and Octavia nowhere to be seen. Some function for the hospital where her mom worked, family friendly, high profile enough that even Abby Griffin, smooth talker as she was, couldn’t come up with a reasonable excuse for why she couldn’t bring her daughter.

They’d even eaten an early dinner together. Sat at opposite ends of the dining room table, Thai take-out rapidly cooling between them, a tense silence so oppressive that even the scrape of cutlery against china sounded violently loud. Abby had tried to make conversation at first, but the words ran out around the same time as the spring rolls did, and soon enough her mom was back to staring at her phone, angrily thumbing through emails.

Clarke might have been disappointed if she weren’t so relieved. 

It had been a while since she’d seen her mom in daylight and the differences were stark, even in the forgiving dull glow of late afternoon. There were more grey hairs scattered through her chestnut hair, the blue light of her phone screen illuminating new lines and wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. She looked tired, worn out. Clarke wondered if any of the grey hairs and lines were down to her, if her mom had ever lain awake at night wondering where it had all gone wrong with her only child. If her mom’s aggressive self-control even allowed for such doubts anymore.

Clarke thought longingly of the Blake house. Tonight was ‘garbage night’, her favourite. It came around every couple of weeks, Bellamy insisting they eat through all the leftovers in the fridge for dinner, her and Octavia concocting whatever outlandish combinations they wanted and daring each other to eat them. Octavia always won - she’d eat anything, her desire to win stronger than any mundane sense of self-preservation. 

She reached for more sticky rice, wishing she was at home eating macaroni cheese and mashed potato sandwiches.

“You don’t need to finish it, Clarke.”

There was something cutting in Abby’s voice, something that stopped her hand halfway to her plate. Clarke looked up, surprised and a bit unsettled to find her mom’s hazel eyes actually on her for once. 

“You can have it for leftovers tomorrow, honey,” her mom added kindly. “And that dress is already so tight on you. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

Clarke shifted in her seat awkwardly, reminded again of how her strapless dress pulled across her chest, the edges digging into her skin, red raw and painful.

A few months ago, seemingly overnight, she’d suddenly developed boobs. She’d gone to bed one night, flat chested and happily oblivious, and woken up the next day looking like she worked at Hooters. She hated it. Her chest ached all the time, none of her clothes fit properly anymore, and now she had guys leching on her wherever she went. She even felt weird around Bellamy, wearing baggy sweatshirts all the time to try and hide her new shape.

In denial about the situation, she hadn’t realised until she put on the dress - ice blue silk, bought only six months ago for a family wedding - how tight it was on her, how laughably incapable it was of containing her new and uncontrollable body. It had taken considerable effort to get the zipper closed, but it just seemed to push all her cleavage upwards, only accentuating the problem. 

The look on her mom’s face when she saw her daughter coming down the stairs was almost worth the humiliation she was going to feel all night. 

“I wish you’d told me you needed a new bra,” her mom continued. “I hadn’t noticed that you’d…gone up a size.”

Clarke would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so mortified. She didn’t own any bras - it would be embarrassing to go shopping with Octavia, who was still enviably flat as a board, and she’d rather die than ever mention anything to Bellamy. Didn’t her mom know that she didn’t own a bra? Wasn’t buying your first bra something that you were meant to do with your mom?

She put the rice back. 

The night hadn’t improved from there. Abby had found a shawl that she’d insisted Clarke wear to try and cover up, so not only was Clarke uncomfortable, sore and horribly self-conscious, she now had to battle with this stupid old lady piece of fabric that kept slipping off her shoulders and getting in the way of everything. 

Once they actually got to the event, her mom had made it through all the speakers - almost a full hour - before abandoning her at their table as soon as the socialising started in earnest.

“I’ll just be a few minutes, sweetheart. You’ll be okay for a little bit on your own, won’t you?”

A couple of the adults tried to talk to her, but quickly gave up after she responded to their polite questions with variations of the same monosyllabic answers. Clarke felt both vindicated and insulted when they turned back to their grown-up conversations, folding her napkin into increasingly intricate shapes as she sulked. 

She felt awkward and anxious on her own. If Octavia was there, she knew that they’d find a way to make the event fun. Like, maybe they could see who could get the most fancy appetisers into their mouth at once. Or they could try to grab one of the glasses of wine that littered the tables. Octavia was a master shoplifter, she’d definitely be able to get a glass without anyone noticing, even here. 

Clarke looked around the room for Abby, but her mom was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m going to the restroom,” she quietly announced to no one, and slipped down from the table. 

The toilets were down a corridor on the other side of the function room. They were fancy, wall-mounted speakers playing classical music at an unobtrusive level, scented candles lit in discrete alcoves. Clarke peed, even though she didn’t really need to, took advantage of the privacy of the cubicle to scratch the sore skin on her chest under the tight hemline. What she really wanted to do was undo the zipper and give herself a few minutes of relief, but she wasn’t entirely sure that she’d be able to do it up again. 

She washed her hands, dried them carefully, even used the complimentary lotion by the side of the sink, trying to waste as much time as possible. Eventually however, she had no choice but to leave. 

There was a little sofa in the corridor opposite the restrooms, and Clarke flopped down on it, ignoring the curious looks of some of the other guests. The table next to the sofa had a selection of magazines, but most of them were about home decorating or travel, no pictures with any celebrities she recognised. She flicked through one of them anyway, ran her fingers over a picture of a waterfall in some exotic rainforest, imagined how much better her life would be if she lived on the other side of the world. 

“Hello.”

Clarke looked up. There was a boy standing in front of her - a year or so older than her, with warm eyes and dark skin, a friendly smile on his face. He was cute, she thought, and instantly felt uneasy. She wasn’t yet used to finding people attractive, and it was still a faintly alarming experience.

“Hi,” she replied cautiously. “Who are you?”

He laughed and sat down on the sofa next to her, holding out his hand. “I’m Wells.”

She shook his hand. He had a good firm grip, which she liked, and his palm was soft and dry. He smelled nice, like expensive cologne - probably pilfered from his dad. “I’m Clarke.”

“I know.” He grinned at her look of confusion. “We go to school together - don’t you recognise me?”

Bewildered, Clarke shook her head. She went to the same middle school as Octavia, and hadn’t really socialised with many of the other students. Octavia was more than enough friend for anyone. 

“I didn’t think so. I’ve heard a lot about you though. Our parents work together at the hospital?”

“Oh.” She couldn’t really think of anything to say to this stranger who seemed to already know everything about her. “My mom hasn’t mentioned you to me.”

“No worries.” He leaned back against the sofa. She’d never met a teenage boy who was so self assured. It reminded her of Bellamy, the confident way he took care of her and Octavia. She couldn’t help but like Wells more because of it. “Do you want to hang out?”

She nodded before she could stop herself. “Yeah, alright.”

Wells stood up, held out his hand. “Come on, I know somewhere we can go.”

He led her further up the corridor and through a hidden door on the left. “This is the green room for the speakers, but they’ve all finished now so it’s empty.”

The green room was okay, better than hanging out in a corridor at least. There were a couple of couches, a table and chairs in the corner, a big dressing table with bulbs round the mirror like in the movies. And best of all, there were proper snacks with pronounceable names.

“How do you know about this place?” Clarke asked, grabbing a bottle of water. She looked longingly at a plate of brownies, but went for a fruit cup instead, her mom’s words still ringing in her head.

“My dad organised the event,” Wells replied, getting his own water and settling down on one of the couches. “So I’ve been here with him all afternoon, helping out.”

Clarke nodded, and, feeling brave, sat down next to him. His eyes lit up, and he turned to her. 

“So, what music are you into?”

Talking to Wells was surprisingly easy, in a way that was usually reserved for Octavia or Bellamy. He was polite, sweet, and when she talked he focused all his attention on her in a way that made her feel like he was really listening, and not like she was being studied under a microscope. After a couple of hours she realised that he hadn’t looked at her chest once, and she felt herself almost physically relax, her spine softening as she melted back against the couch. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you,” she eventually said. “I’m really close with my best friend, and I guess I don’t really have that many other friends.”

Wells bent down to put his empty water bottle on the floor - he’d been gesticulating with it while he argued passionately for the merits of Iron Man over Captain America. “Yeah - Octavia, right? I’ve seen her too - she looks intense.”

“That’s Octavia,” Clarke smiled, thinking of her fierce best friend. 

“She always looks really angry.”

Clarke considered it. “She is alway really angry, I think. But she’s nice to me.”

Wells straightened up and settled back onto the couch, stretching one arm out along the back, ending up closer to Clarke than he’d been before. The very tips of his fingers brushed her shoulder. “As long as she’s nice to you.”

Her heartbeat sped up as he leaned in to her, moving so gradually that Clarke felt like she was seeing in slow motion. Her eyelids fluttered closed, almost of their own volition. He smelled even better up close. 

Before, whenever Clarke had thought about having her first kiss, she’d been convinced that it would be weird and clumsy, that she wouldn’t know what to do with her mouth or her tongue or her hands. She and Octavia had watched dozens of romantic movies, giggling over every kiss scene, and she’d tried her best to memorise what she was meant to do, had run through every possible scenario in her head to figure out exactly how she was supposed to tilt her head, whether she should put her hands on the boy’s shoulders or around his neck, what to do with your feet. 

In the end, it happened so quickly she didn’t have any time to overthink it. Well’s lips were gentle, the kiss no more than a light press of his mouth to hers, over before she even realised it had started.

He pulled away slightly. “Is this okay?”

Clarke nodded, and Wells smiled in relief before moving back in and kissing her again, more confidently this time.

She didn’t know how long they kissed for, but it was long enough for her to reach up and put her hand on his neck, pulling him closer to her so that he sighed against her lips. Soon Wells coaxed her mouth open, tentatively touched his tongue to hers, encouraged her to reciprocate, her movements shy and hesitant. She felt the beginnings of desire blossoming in her stomach but swallowed down the moan that threatened to escape. She was already falling out of her dress - she didn’t want him to think she was some kind of slut. 

She wondered if Wells had an erection from kissing her. If he liked it. If she was doing okay. 

Eventually the noise from outside died down, and Clarke reluctantly pulled away, mouth tender.

“I think we should go,” she whispered.

Wells nodded, his eyes sparkling. “Okay,” he whispered back. He leaned back in, gave her one last closed-mouthed kiss before he stood up. 

They found their parents together, sat talking at one of the tables while the catering staff broke down the room around them. Her mom seemed surprised to see her, like she’d forgotten that Clarke was even there, but her colleague Dr. Jaha (Wells’ father, she now realised) was overjoyed. 

“Finally, you two meet!” he exclaimed, clapping one hand on each of their shoulders. “Look Abby - the next generation of our medical dynasty!”

Abby’s reaction at seeing them was less overjoyed.

“Where’s your wrap, Clarke?”

Clarke bit her lip, guiltily thinking of the abandoned piece of fabric, left forlorn on the floor of the green room. 

They waited in the lobby while their parents went to collect everyone’s coats. Clarke scuffed her shoes against the plush red carpet, wished her dress had pockets so she’d have something to do with her hands. She wanted to cross her arms across her chest but worried the dress might split or something equally mortifying. In all her imaginings, she’d never considered that the time after the kiss might be more nerve-wracking than the kiss itself. She felt uncomfortable making eye contact with Wells in public, knowing that she’d had his tongue in her mouth less than thirty minutes ago.

“Clarke?”

Wells held out a napkin. When she took it, she found a phone number scrawled in felt tip across the inside. 

“I really liked hanging out with you,” he continued. “You should message me, let me know if you want to do it again?”

Clarke folded the napkin into a tiny square small enough to fit in her fist. When she looked up he was watching her, a hopeful smile on his face. She smiled back awkwardly.

“You know, you’re really pretty - ” he started, but was cut off by the return of their parents. 

Abby wielded Clarke’s coat like a weapon, covering her up chest first and rushing her out into the night to hail a cab. Clarke looked back through the revolving door on their way out, and caught Wells watching her leave. He raised his hand and waved.

That night Clarke slept with the napkin under her pillow, replaying the kiss in her mind. It had been the perfect first kiss - so perfect that she was half-convinced she’d made it up. She’d thought she would feel like a new person after kissing someone, forever changed in some profound and undefinable way, but she didn’t feel different at all.

She wanted to message Wells, just to reassure herself that it had really happened, but it was too soon. Clarke didn’t have any experience with dating, but even she knew that you had to wait a few days before you messaged someone, otherwise they’d think you were a loser. 

The next day was a Saturday so she slept in late, and when she woke up her mom had already gone to work. She made cereal for breakfast - All Bran, her mom never bought any cereal that didn’t look and taste like cardboard - and ate standing up at the kitchen counter. Part of her wanted to make a mess, drip milk all over the pristine surfaces, drop crumbs over the spotless white tiled floor, but it wouldn’t be her mom cleaning up anyway, so there was no point. By the time Abby got back, their cleaning lady would already have been round the house, resetting the scene so no traces of her daughter remained. 

She checked the refrigerator for the left-over Thai food, but wasn’t surprised to find it in the trash, already covered with coffee grounds.

Clarke changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, packed her bag and got the bus back home, the folded napkin safely tucked in her left back pocket. 

She’d never been so relieved to see the Blake house with its peeling paintwork and crooked window blinds, the overgrown front yard still decked out with Halloween decorations. She went round the back, letting herself in through the kitchen door, not at all surprised to find Bellamy sat at the kitchen table, frowning at a dog eared paperback. A hot cup of coffee sat in front of him, steam curling up into the cold room. Clarke grimaced at the bitter smell. 

“Hey, princess,” he greeted her, not bothering to look up. “You had breakfast?” 

“Kind of,” she replied, looking at the greasy pans piled up in the sink. There were two covered plates on the counter, and her mouth watered at the suggestion of bacon. Bellamy always cooked breakfast for everyone when he woke up, leaving a plate for Octavia to nuke in the microwave whatever time she wandered into the kitchen. Clarke felt warm and fuzzy knowing that he’d done a plate for her as well this morning, even though he’d had no way of knowing when she’d come back. “Is Octavia up?”

“Not yet.” Bellamy tore himself away from his book, gestured to the chair next to him. “Sit down, eat.”

“I’m just gonna go find Octavia first.” Clarke evaded. 

Bellamy looked like he wanted to say something, eyes narrowing, but in the end he shrugged and turned back to his book. “Okay, suit yourself.”

Octavia’s bedroom was shaded and quiet, no signs of life except a giant pile of blankets in the middle of the bed that shifted slightly when Clarke closed the door. She dropped her backpack in the corner next to the desk and toed off her sneakers, eyeing the lump critically. 

“Octavia?” she called. “You awake?”

There was no response. 

Clarke backed up until she hit the door. Then she ran across the room and jumped, launching herself onto the bed, aiming for the middle of the nest of blankets. The mattress bounced as she landed, the ancient springs squeaking in protest at the same time as Octavia squealed in outrage at the sudden attack. 

It was chaos as Octavia struggled to escape from under the covers, flailing limbs and wild elbows, expletives filling the air. Clarke straddled her body easily, revelling in her friend’s indignant shrieks, mercilessly tickling any bare skin that emerged. 

“You - bitch - ” Octavia grunted as she tried to wrestle free, squirming like an eel between Clarke’s knees. 

Clarke laughed, working her fingers into her friend’s sides to tickle her ribs through the blankets. “Give up, loser!”

Octavia put up a good fight, but eventually she went still under the covers, pinned.

“I hate you,” she grouched, words muffled by fabric. “Why are you back anyway?”

Clarke climbed off her best friend, dropping to the mattress next to her. She prodded the Octavia-lump with her foot and was rewarded with one last squeal. “She had work.”

“Shocker,” Octavia replied, emerging from her blanket nest. Her hair was a mess of static, cheeks flushed from oversleep and the play fight. “Why are you in such a good mood then?”

Clarke didn’t reply, shrugging and lowering her gaze mysteriously. It wasn’t often - ever, really - that she had a secret from Octavia, and she wanted to make the most of it. 

“What happened?” Octavia exclaimed, eyes going wide. She sat up, leaning over Clarke as she lay grinning and silent. “You have to tell me, Clarke, come on!”

“I met a boy - ” Clarke began, only to be immediately interrupted by a dramatic gasp from Octavia. 

“Omg! Tell me everything!”

“I’m trying to!” Clarke laughed. “Let me in.”

She wriggled her way under the covers with Octavia, snuggling in close. After all the firsts of last night, this was gloriously familiar. The scratch of faded floral sheets against her skin, the artificial scent of Octavia’s strawberry shampoo, the distant sounds of Bellamy just down the hall - all of it triggered a wave of sense memory so intense it was better than a movie montage. Clarke didn’t have to close her eyes to see every time that she and Octavia had laid together like this, heads on the same pillow, sharing their little girl secrets behind cupped hands. 

Clarke was excited about her first kiss. But she couldn’t deny that there was a part of her that just wanted to pull the covers up over their head and let the world spin on without them, stay suspended in their childhood forever. 

“So?” Octavia prodded once Clarke got settled.

Clarke told Octavia everything that had happened with Wells, from meeting him outside the bathroom to the napkin still tucked in her jeans pocket.

“It was so good,” she finished, flopping onto her back theatrically, spreading her arms wide. “Honestly, O, it wasn’t awkward at all. Like, maybe at the end when we were with my mom and his dad. But when we were alone, it was so nice. I felt like I’d known him forever.”

Octavia was entranced, eyes fixated on Clarke, mouth agape. Clarke had never felt so interesting or grown-up in her life. 

“Tell me more about the kiss.”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Clarke replied dreamily, playing it up, biting her lip. “It was just - good? Not weird at all.”

“But how did it _feel_? You have to give me more details than that!”

“Honestly, I don’t know how to describe it. I guess you can’t understand it until you’ve done it.”

Clarke knew it was a mistake the moment she said it. She could almost hear the dull thud of her words sinking like a stone, the light fading from Octavia’s eyes as her jaw hardened.

“Yeah, sure.” Octavia bit out. “I get it.”

“O,” Clarke pleaded. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No worries.” Octavia rolled over, giving Clarke her back, the hunched lines of her shoulders. “You’re right, I don’t know what it feels like.”

Clarke ran her hand down Octavia’s hair, marvelling at the velvet feel of it, her friend’s secret softness. She tried not to hurt at how Octavia stiffened beneath her touch. 

“Don’t be upset with me.”

Octavia shrugged. “I’m not upset.”

“O, come on.”

Clarke tried to pull Octavia back around - when that didn’t work, she clambered over her, putting them face to face again. She held her shoulder firmly when Octavia tried to roll back over the other way, keeping her in place. Octavia still wouldn’t look at her, chin lowered to her chest, so Clarke scooted down the mattress and into her eyeline. 

“I’m sorry,” she wheedled, dragging out the sounds. She pulled her most innocent face, making her eyes as wide and round as possible, her lower lip quivering. It was a face that never failed to make Octavia laugh, reminding her of all the times that Clarke had used it on Bellamy, all the things that they’d gotten away with together. 

This time it couldn’t even raise a smile, Octavia’s lips barely quirking upwards before they fell back to a frown.

Clarke wriggled back up the bed and sighed. 

“Octavia…” 

They lay in silence, the moment ruined. If Clarke had forgotten how much Octavia hated feeling left out, she was getting a harsh reminder now. 

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, knowing even as she spoke that the words weren’t enough. 

“What do you care if I’m upset?” Octavia replied bitterly. “Don’t you have _Wells_ now? Your new best friend that you’ve known _forever_?”

“ _You’re_ my best friend,” Clarke insisted. “You know you are.”

“Whatever.”

It was like a knife through the ribs, Octavia talking to her like she talked to everyone else. Unbearable.

Clarke butted her forehead gently against Octavia’s, held it there, staring into the dark blur of her friend’s eyes, too close to make out any details. It didn’t matter. She’d been able to draw Octavia’s face from memory for years, could have picked her out from a line-up if she was blindfolded in the dark. 

“You’re my best friend. Forever.”

Octavia huffed, but didn’t argue back. 

They stayed like that, foreheads pressed together, Octavia’s breath faint against Clarke’s cheek. 

“I can’t believe you went and had your first kiss without me,” Octavia finally muttered.

“It’s really not a big deal.” Clarke took the opening, eager for forgiveness. “It lasted like, five seconds.”

Octavia drew back, expression skeptical. Her eyes were suspiciously wet. Not quite tears, but closer than Clarke had seen for a long time. 

“That’s not what you were saying a minute ago,” Octavia pointed out, not ready to let Clarke off the hook. “You were really excited about it.” 

Clarke shook her head furiously, almost tripping over her words in the rush to get them out. “I was just trying to show off. It didn’t really mean anything.”

Octavia said nothing, just lay there and let Clarke explain herself away. By the time Clarke finished rambling, Octavia’s expression was starting to lift, but she was still pouting. 

“I’ll probably never have a first kiss,” she said petulantly. 

Clarke dared to roll her eyes, just enough to show Octavia how ridiculous the idea was. “Yeah you will. Loads of guys like you. You’re beautiful.” 

“Yeah, sure.”

“It’s true!” Clarke insisted, but Octavia shrugged.

“You have to say that. You don’t know, I might die without ever kissing anyone.” 

Clarke didn’t know what she was going to say next until she was already saying it.

“Okay, then we’ll share.”

There was a beat of shocked silence. 

“What?” Octavia asked, stunned.

“Share _my_ first kiss,” Clarke insisted, nodding, shifting closer to Octavia on the bed. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was suggesting, but the words felt right, resonated in her chest with a feeling like yes.

Octavia opened her mouth to speak, still confused - but before she could make a sound, Clarke kissed her.

It was exhilarating. When she’d kissed Wells he’d been in control. Gentle, sweet, patient - but firmly in charge nonetheless. 

Now Clarke was in charge, Octavia’s mouth trembling beneath hers, blindly following wherever she led. She tasted nervous, and it sent a strange thrill running down Clarke’s spine, the sensation tingling out through her fingertips.

This kiss wasn’t anywhere near perfect. It was uncoordinated, clumsy, almost frantic. Their lips came together too hard, then too soft, their noses getting in the way before they eventually found the right angle, Clarke pulling Octavia’s hair to tilt her. She tried to smoothly coax the other girl’s mouth open, as Wells had done with her, but Octavia opened her mouth too fast, overeager, and Clarke had to retreat. 

“Shh,” Clarke whispered. She laid her hand over her friend’s chest to soothe her, calm her down, and leaned back in. 

They took it slower the second time. Octavia murmured as the kiss deepened, an unconscious little sound that curled through Clarke’s body like smoke, kindling a heat that built in her stomach and settled between her legs. Octavia’s tongue was fumbling and inexperienced, but that only made it sexier somehow. Clarke thought about grabbing Octavia’s hand and pulling it between her thighs, how her friend’s slender, clever fingers would feel, equally fumbling on her clit. 

Clarke wasn’t prepared for the shock that rushed through her at the thought, unable to contain the electric urge that drove her to kiss Octavia harder, accidentally grazing the other girl’s lower lip with the sharp edge of her teeth.

Octavia yelped and pulled away. Her mouth was wet, her lips plump and swollen.

“You’re not very good at that,” she accused, voice rasping. “I don’t think it’s meant to hurt.”

Clarke stared at her, mouth still open, the erratic thump of her heartbeat ringing in her ears. This was how she’d expected to feel after her first kiss. Panting, dishevelled, a touch of shame spiking the pleasure even higher. 

What did it mean, that she was more affected by a stupid kiss with Octavia than her actual first kiss?

A couple of hours later she stood in the kitchen, foot on the pedal holding the trashcan open, the napkin with Wells’ number in her hand. 

She could hear Bellamy and Octavia bickering in the other room, a lazy Saturday afternoon argument with no real heat behind it. Clarke had heard all their arguments before, was so used to the familiar rhythm of their quarrels that she barely registered the words anymore. They’d settle down in a few minutes - Bellamy loved to grumble, but he loved his sister more. For all her pushing, Octavia had yet to find the limits of his forgiveness.

Wells’ handwriting was neat and uniform, easy to read even where the ink had started to bleed into the thin paper. The napkin was creased from Clarke folding it into her fist the night before, tucking it into her pocket that morning. 

“Shut up, O.” Bellamy’s voice rose in volume, signalling the end of the conversation. “Clarke, you coming?”

Clarke opened her hand and watched the napkin flutter into the trash. She let the pedal go, the lid of the trash can slamming shut with a clang.

“Coming,” she replied.

\- 

Clarke bends over the bathtub and turns on the tap for the shower, darting back just in time to avoid the sudden spray of freezing cold water. The pipes clank and gurgle in the walls as the heater kicks in, the flow of water erratic at first but soon evening out. Steam starts to fill the tiny bathroom. 

She strips off her pyjamas, dumps them in the hamper in the corner of the room. She only catches a glimpse of her naked body in the mirror before it clouds up, nothing more than a quick impression of pale skin and curved lines, a shock of tangled blonde hair. She’s relieved, if slightly surprised to find no blood on her thighs when she glances down to check. 

The hot water feels good when she steps into the shower, the pressure of the water beating out the ache in her muscles from a night spent tossing and turning in a shared single bed. Clarke raises her face to the spray and lets it wash over her, reaching up to smooth her wet hair back off her face. She could happily stand there all day, basking in the heat and the white noise of the shower. 

She starts to reach for the shower gel and hesitates. Lets her hand skip over the shower gel that she and Octavia share and, not for the first time, picks up Bellamy’s instead.

Just another secret to add to the list, she supposes. 

The shower gel smells like pine, sharp and invigorating, and as she soaps up the crisp scent fills the room, billowing clouds of steam that smell like Bellamy. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe he was there with her. Normally that’s exactly what she does - lathers herself up and pretends that it’s his large hands on her body, the rough skin of his palms gliding over her wet skin. Imagines Bellamy cupping her breasts, feeling the weight of them, thumbs rubbing over her nipples as he mutters praise into the curve of her neck. Palming the curve of her hips, running his blunt nails up her soft thighs to feel the give of her flesh, her buttocks filling his hands to overflowing. The hard press of him into her ass as he works her to orgasm, filling her up to bursting with his thick fingers and filthy-sweet words. Her body reimagined, remade into something beautiful and desirable under his touch. 

Today, Clarke just wants the comfort of his scent, or so she tells herself. She keeps telling herself that, even as her hands move lower, as she reaches down to circle her fingers around her clit, still aroused and on edge from last night. She’s shamefully slippery between her legs. She’s rougher with herself than normal, rubbing herself to a quick climax that hits like a slap and leaves her fighting for air. 

Her orgasm breaks something in her, her next breath coming out as a sob, a flood of tears let loose only to be washed away instantly by the shower. 

_No._

She doesn’t deserve to cry. 

Clarke shakes her head and swallows the tears back down, picks up the shampoo. 

\- 

It’s almost noon by the time that the girls come into the kitchen. 

Bellamy’s still sitting at the kitchen table. His empty mug sits in front of him, overlapping coffee stains on the inside, each ring a pathetic reminder of every refill, every minute he’d waited for Clarke. He’s skimming through the news on his phone but he isn’t absorbing the information, words floating over the surface of his mind before disappearing into the ether. 

Octavia rushes in first, glowing with energy as she always does after one of her night-time visits. She’s wearing one of his sweatshirts over a pair of tight jeans with rips in the knees. Her hair is messily piled on top of her head in a loose bun. The sweatshirt is comically oversized on her petite frame, and his sister looks painfully young, fresh faced and carefree, almost bouncing on her feet. Bellamy wearily registers the familiar burst of love and awe in his chest that he always experiences when he sees her. 

“Morning,” Octavia sing-speaks when she sees him at the table, circling around to hug him from behind where he sits, her cheek pressed to his as she looks over his shoulder at his phone. “Reading anything interesting?”

“You’re in a good mood,” Bellamy comments archly, fatigue making him mean, making him want to needle her a little bit. “Sleep well?”

Octavia either ignores his tone or doesn’t notice it. She drops a kiss on his cheek, briefly squeezes her arms around him before straightening up and wandering over to the counter. 

“Slept alright,” she shrugs, then glances back at him with surprise after noticing the empty countertop. “No breakfast?”

Bellamy shakes his head, scrubs his hands over his face. He feels like shit. 

“Woke up late,” he lies.

“Oh, okay,” Octavia says, visibly disappointed. “Clarke and I are going to the mall, I guess we’ll have breakfast there then.”

As if summoned by his sister, Clarke appears in the kitchen doorway. Her blonde hair is wet, hanging in waves around her face, leaving little drops of water on the collar of her cropped t-shirt. She’s not wearing any make-up, face scrubbed pink like she’s just got out of the shower. Bellamy’s whole body thrills at the sight of her, the contrast between his memories and the squeaky clean Clarke in front of him setting his blood aflame. 

He wants to strip her down, get her out of those prim high waisted jeans and snow white Converse and find out if he’s left his mark on her. 

Clarke doesn’t actually come into the kitchen, just rests her shoulder against the doorframe, her pose overly casual and awkward to Bellamy’s assessing gaze. He waits for her to look over but she looks to Octavia instead, eyes skipping over him like he’s not even there.

“Good morning, princess.”

“Hey, Bellamy,” she says dismissively, still not looking at him. She bites her lip as she watches Octavia open the fridge to scavenge for leftovers, crossing her arms against her chest, sticking to the doorframe like she’s glued to it. 

It’s not exactly the greeting that Bellamy’s spent all morning waiting for.

“No breakfast this morning, I’m afraid,” he continues. “Slept in.”

If he was hoping to provoke a reaction from her, any kind of guilt for leaving him hanging, he’s disappointed.

“Don’t worry about it. Octavia and I are going out anyway.” Her voice is light and breezy, polite but disinterested. She could be talking to a stranger at a bus stop, not the almost-brother she’s known for a decade. 

“What have you got planned?” Bellamy prods, wanting Clarke to look at him, acknowledge him, anything but this strange detachment.

 _Look at me_ , he thinks. _Let me see you_.

There's a cold feeling leeching through his body, getting colder with every second that Clarke ignores him. She’s never been like this with him before. This isn’t the coy avoidance of the past few months, the endearingly obvious attempts to hide her desire for him. This is different. Clarke is _blanking_ him. 

She gives no sign that she’s heard him, checks her phone.

“O, you wanna go?” she says, tucking her phone back into her pocket. “We’re late.”

“Sure.” His sister takes one last illicit gulp of orange juice from the carton and puts it back on the shelf, slamming the fridge door. 

“See you later, Bell,” Octavia waves at him before spinning on her heels and running after Clarke, already halfway down the hallway. 

“Bye, girls,” Bellamy calls from the kitchen, willing Clarke to turn around.

But Clarke doesn’t look back, just lets the front door fall shut behind her, the impact rattling the door frame. Bellamy’s left in the kitchen alone. Again.

With irritation he notices that Octavia hasn’t shut the refrigerator door properly. It’s old - like everything else in this fucking house - and the seal doesn’t work as well as it used to. Half the time it bounces open again after you close it, unless you do it carefully. And careful has never been his sister’s speciality. 

With a groan Bellamy gets up and closes the refrigerator door, pulls on it a bit to make sure it’s properly shut. Only then does he register the $100 dollar bill, pinned to the fridge door with a magnet. 

He feels the blood rushing to his face as he stares at it, humiliation and understanding seeping its way through him.

Years ago, once it became obvious to everyone that Clarke spent more time at the Blake house than she ever did at her own home, her mom had started sending money with her to help defray the costs of supporting an extra kid. It’s probably the closest that Abby Griffin has ever come to active parenting. Even as children they’d instinctively recognised the awkwardness of Clarke directly handing Bellamy money, so they’d come up with a more polite system of payment. Every Friday evening for almost ten years Clarke has discretely left a crisp $100 dollar bill pinned to the refrigerator door, and every Saturday morning Bellamy has taken it down and tucked into his wallet for the weekly grocery run.

Bellamy hasn’t consciously thought about it for years. It’s a routine that’s long-established, unworthy of comment. But this morning something niggles at him, doesn’t sit quite right. This morning when he looks at the money, he thinks of grimy alleyway negotiations, money left on nightstands, middle-aged johns barely waiting to get their pants up before they get the hell out of dodge. Hookers, erased from memory as soon as the motel door closes.

He feels sick.

\- 

Bellamy stands in the backyard, wrapping his hands up tight. The heavy bag hanging from the tree is a relic, a leftover from an ex-boyfriend of his mom who’d fancied himself a boxer. He’d actually been a pretty decent guy, happy to show a fourteen year old kid how to fight, patiently spending hours with Bellamy in the backyard running him through footwork and drills while O watched enviously from the sidelines. 

He’d dated Aurora for almost six months before getting picked up for dealing. Bellamy had almost missed him. The boxer had probably been the only one of his mom’s boyfriends he felt okay leaving her alone with. (Not Octavia though. His little sister has never spent a single second in the house with any of Aurora’s boyfriends without Bellamy there with her.)

Bellamy’s first hit to the bag is brutal, the impact reverberating up through his shoulder, bag jerking on the chain like it’s been hit with a bullet rather than a fist. It feels satisfying to hit something, do something rather than sit around uselessly waiting for a fifteen year old girl to take pity on him. 

God, he’s so fucking stupid. 

Waiting in that kitchen for hours, excited just at the thought of seeing Clarke, getting his hopes up like he didn’t know exactly how this was always going to go. He’d learned years ago that girls like that, girls like Clarke, weren’t for him. Sure, they’d let him fuck them blind when the lights were out, beckon him in through bedroom windows and into the back seats of cars, let him dirty them up when there was no one there to see. Nice girls didn’t seem to mind the calluses on his fingers when he was two knuckles deep in their cunts. It was only once the sun started rising over the horizon that the problems started. 

The tree branch creaks ominously as Bellamy pummels the bag, ignoring the protests of his muscles, the sweat that stings his eyes. 

Clarke’s just like every other rich girl who’s fucked him in the dark and discarded him in the cold light of day. She’s ashamed of what happened last night. Not because of what she did. But because she did it with him. 

Bellamy is nothing to her but a convenience, bought with her mother’s money. A practice lay, a dummy run, before she moves on to a better class of guy. A doctor maybe, or a lawyer. The kind of guy with numbers after his name. A legacy, with a family tree that can be traced back four generations, who goes to class in a building named after his grandfather. Someone who can look after her properly. 

Not a bartender with half a community college degree and a sister-daughter, a loser who doesn’t even know who his dad is.

Maybe Clarke had wanted him. Maybe he hadn’t been completely delusional to see desire in her eyes, to think that she was tongue-tied and weak-kneed over him. To imagine his princess, skirt flipped up and knickers pulled down to her knees, wet fingered and sticky at the thought of his hands on her. 

But if she had wanted him - it was despite who he is. Not because of who he is. 

Bellamy lands a particularly vicious jab remembering how she’d clenched around him last night, the memory of what it had felt like to be inside her. How he’d felt this morning waiting for her, his happiness fading, first into desperate hope, and then cold realisation. 

He knows just how it’s gonna go now. Clarke won’t be cruel to him - won’t treat him with outright disgust or laughter. His princess has got class, after all. She’ll never let on that she’s tested him and found him wanting. It’ll be a gradual withdrawal, a widening distance between them, a beat of awkward silence every time she sees him from now on until one day he looks up and realises that they’ve become strangers to each other. She’ll break his heart discretely, and it’ll hurt worse than salt in a gaping wound.

Bellamy can’t really blame Clarke for thinking that she’s too good for him. She’s right. He knows it. He’s always known it - he’d just hoped that maybe he’d done enough over the years, proved himself enough, to begin to deserve her. To get her to stay with him.

There’s a cold, desolate place inside Bellamy that has always known that one day Octavia is going to leave him. She loves him too much, too obsessively, too intensely for it to last. One day he’s going to disappoint her - it’s inevitable, a fate set in motion the first time she looked up with her dark baby eyes and held out her hands for him, the first moment she placed all her blind trust in him, her big brother. And when that day comes, when Octavia realises that he isn’t the saint she’s set him up to be, she’s going to leave. 

Octavia has always been too much, too vital for this life. It’s ludicrous to think that she could ever be contained here, in this shitty house, this grinding existence with him, for long. Every day she gets older is just a day closer to her leaving. 

Maybe that’s why he indulges her so much, why he’s so protective of her. All his futile sacrifices, pathetic offerings and scraps, laid carefully at her feet despite knowing how easily they’ll be swept aside and forgotten in the end. As their time together ticks down, he can’t help but become even more possessive, hanging on to every second with her like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand. 

In a few years, Octavia will have all but forgotten him. She probably won’t even remember fucking him. And if she does, there’s no way to say how she’ll remember it, how the story will change and adapt to suit whatever narrative she wants to tell about herself at the time. Octavia has a survivor’s memory - she remembers whatever she needs to remember, forgets whatever she needs to forget to keep moving. It’s yet another thing he can’t help but admire about her - her ruthless ability to live, at whatever cost.

Bellamy had thought Clarke might be different. His girl has always been softer, more forgiving of him than Octavia, more accepting of his mistakes. She needed him more, he’d thought - to protect her, to love her, keep her close and wanted. Even before he fell in love with Clarke, he’d imagined that they had a special bond, a quiet, unspoken thing that drew them together like magnets, two people looking for their north star. The hours they’d spent together, the peace that settles in his chest when he’s with her. 

He’d thought maybe he could keep her, in the end.

Obviously he’d been wrong. The bond between him and Clarke is a shadow, nothing more than the bond of the only two people in the world who knew what it was like to love Octavia. He’d mistaken proximity and necessity for something more meaningful, built it up into a disappointment waiting to happen, like a fool.

Being used by Octavia is what he signed up for. Being used by Clarke, as much as he should have known better, hurts. 

Bellamy finally stops, leans forward to catch his breath, feels like he’s breathing through a throat lined with broken glass. He pulls himself up on the still-swaying bag, rests his sweaty forehead briefly against the cold vinyl before he pushes off and removes his gloves. 

\- 

“What do you think of this?”

Octavia holds up a dress - red, body con, backless. It’s made out of that kind of stretchy fabric that clings to every curve and line, the closest you can get to naked without being arrested. Clarke feels chubby just looking at it, but she knows it would look stunning on her friend’s slender frame.

“I think you’d make it one step out of the bedroom before Bellamy tackled you with a bathrobe,” Clarke remarks wryly, turning back to the rack of dresses in front of her. 

Octavia rolls her eyes but puts the dress back anyway. 

Clarke can’t focus, aimlessly browsing without really seeing anything. The metal hangers screech along the display rail as she looks through the dresses, barely even noticing the colours. 

Green. Black. More green. 

_I fucked Bellamy last night._

“Clarke?”

Octavia holds up another dress - this one is a stunning shade of cobalt blue, which is the only good thing about it. It’s another body con design, low cut and tight with a massive peplum frill made of tulle that would definitely look like you’d got into a fight with a hockey net and lost.

“Try it on?” Clarke suggests. 

“Okay, so that was a test,” Octavia replies, shoving the dress back into the display with some difficulty, puffy layers of tulle catching on the other dresses on the rack. “Which you failed. This dress is fucking hideous.”

A nearby shop assistant looks up with a frown. Octavia ignores her. 

“What’s up with you?” She sidles up to Clarke, leaning with one elbow on the rail, forcing her to stop browsing. 

“Just not in the mood for shopping, I guess.” Clarke replies lightly, forcing a smile. 

“Well, you need to get in the mood!” Octavia insists. “It’s your birthday in two months. Have you even decided what you’re gonna do for it?”

“Not really,” Clarke admits. “You know I don’t really like birthdays.”

Clarke’s father had died in a car accident before she turned one. She doesn’t miss him - she never knew him - but there’s always still something a little about her birthdays, a prickling feeling in the back of her mind like something’s not quite right. Maybe it’s nothing more complicated than simple sadness. You can’t miss what you’ve never had, but she does wonder what her childhood might have been like if he’d lived, if she’d had at least one loving parent, if her mom hadn’t decided to lobotomise herself with twenty hour days at the hospital, six days a week.

“But this is a big one! Sweet sixteen. You can’t say you’re not, like, at least a bit excited.”

“I’ll probably just do what I usually do.”

Octavia groans in frustration. “I think your sixteenth birthday is worth a little bit more than Chinese food and renting a film on Prime. Don’t you want to go out? Do something different?”

_Something different?_

Over the past few months Clarke has spun dozens of different fantasies about her birthday, each one more elaborate than the last, all centred around Bellamy. She’s imagined romantic dinners, slow dances, complicated scavenger hunts that ended in romantic declarations of undying love spelled out in rose petals. After all, sixteen seems so much older, so much more grown up than fifteen. Maybe he’s been waiting for her birthday to make a move, counting down the days until he can touch her.

Of course, that was all before last night. 

Clarke not-so-gently shoves Octavia off the rack and returns her attention to the clothes.

“Birthdays are pointless anyway. Every day we wake up and we’re one day older than yesterday. People didn’t even celebrate their birthdays until a couple of hundred years ago.” 

Clarke snaps the hangers along the rail as she talks, getting progressively faster and faster as she goes. She doesn’t even notice the edge that’s crept into her voice until she looks up to see Octavia staring at her, eyebrows raised.

“Okay, _Bellamy_. God, why are you such a grouch today?”

Clarke sighs. “Sorry, I’m just a bit tired.”

“Come on,” Octavia loops her arm through Clarke’s, leading her out of the store. “Time to get you some caffeine. You’re literally the opposite of fun right now.”

\- 

Clarke hands over her credit card to the barista in Starbucks as Octavia idles beside her. She’s had a copy of her mom’s card since she was ten, and she still gets a little kick of satisfaction every time she uses it for something frivolous. It’s doubly satisfying to order something so unhealthy - her mom would have a fit if she knew how many empty calories Clarke was about to consume on her dime. 

They collect their drinks and manage to find a table right at the back of the coffee shop. It’s absolutely rammed - Saturday afternoon crowds - and the table is squashed in a corner, uncomfortably close to the rest rooms. 

“So, your birthday,” Octavia starts the instant they sit down, huddling over the table conspiratorially. “What are your ideas?”

“I already told you.” Clarke sits back and takes a sip of her iced tea, almost moaning in relief as the caffeine and sugar hits her system. 

“Okay, well, I’ve got some alternative suggestions.”

Clarke’s attention strays as her friend talks, people watching as she tends to do in coffee shops. Her fingers itch for a sketchpad and something to draw with. She wishes she wasn’t too nervous to draw in front of people - she’s bored of still life, wants to try capturing faces, people. Real life. 

Lost in thought, she realises too late that she’s caught the attention of a guy sat a couple of tables over. He’s with a group of his friends, but he’s ignoring them, sat watching Clarke with a smile on his face. He’s handsome in a mild, unthreatening way, baby-faced like her, big brown eyes and long chestnut hair that just skims his shoulders. Bellamy could probably break him in two.

Clarke snaps her attention back to her drink, hating herself for the way that her heart pounds, nerves going to pieces just from a look. When she dares to glance up again a few seconds later he’s still staring at her, watching her over the rim of his coffee cup. She slouches to try and mask the line of her cleavage under her top, uncomfortable with the idea that he might be checking out her breasts.

He smiles at her, but she’s too flustered to smile back. 

“You know that Bellamy never checks on us after we’ve gone to bed, we could totally sneak out…” Octavia trails off as she finally notices Clarke isn’t listening. “What?”

Octavia bodily turns in her chair to see what’s caught Clarke’s attention. The guy grins widely at Clarke’s scandalised expression. 

“O!” Clarke hisses, mortified, leaning over to hit her on the arm.

“Oh, he’s cute!” Octavia enthuses, turning back to Clarke. “And he’s totally checking you out. Are you gonna talk to him?”

“What? No!” Clarke panics. “Why would I talk to him?”

“Clarke. He’s hot,” Octavia solemnly punctuates her sentence with a long draw of her frappacino, straw gurgling loudly in the half empty cup. “Why wouldn’t you talk to him?”

Clarke stares at her friend, lost for words. 

“After last night?”

Octavia looks blankly at her, gesturing in confusion. “Last night?”

“You know, after we…with Bellamy…” Clarke stutters out, feeling like she’s stumbled into an alternate dimension. 

Octavia barely reacts, seemingly more interested in manoeuvring her straw to get the last dregs of her coffee. She takes one final pull, cheeks hollowing, and then sits back, satisfied. 

“Oh, yeah. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“O…”

Clarke is stunned. Does Octavia really not get what they’ve done, the significance of it?

“Don’t you think it’s weird, talking about boys after we’ve, you know?” she prompts, already seeing the futility of what she’s trying to attempt.

“No, not really,” Octavia replies flippantly. She bats her empty cup between her hands, back and forth, the plastic container rattling as it skids over the table.

“Really? Octavia, we -”

“You’re overthinking this, Clarke,” Octavia’s face is calm, but her voice is firm. She catches the cup with her right hand, taps it lightly on the table. “Chill out.” 

And really, what is Clarke going to do? Force her friend to understand what they’ve done, lay it all out, right here in a Starbucks? 

_We fucked Bellamy, Octavia. We took advantage of him. We -_

Clarke can’t even think it, let alone say it. She would like to be braver, wishes that it didn’t take so much out of her to push back against Octavia, that she could make her friend understand what they’ve done wrong. But then, if she was even a little bit stronger, she wouldn’t have found herself in this situation in the first place. 

She’s trapped. She can’t talk about how she feels, the regret and shame that’s been following her around all day, the black pit opening up inside her. There’s nothing she’s done that Octavia hasn’t done a dozen times. Talking about her own feelings of guilt would be an attack - like a ricocheting bullet, whatever accusations she levels at herself will rebound to hit her friend as well. 

Clarke looks at Octavia, obliviously happy under the bright fluorescent lights. How could she do that to her best friend? 

“I guess you’re right,” she says uneasily. 

Octavia smiles as Clarke gives in.

“I always am,” she agrees happily. “Everything would be so much easier if I was in charge, don’t you think?”

\- 

They get back to the house late. The sun’s already setting when they wander in through the front door, casting everything with a warm glow. Even the Blake house looks more charming and less neglected than usual, almost shabby chic in the rich light of golden hour.

“Bell?” Octavia calls as they get in. “You here?”

There’s no reply, but when they go into the living room he’s there, lying on the couch watching TV.

Clarke hesitates, caught off guard by the way Bellamy looks stretched out across the sagging cushions, so close to how he looked last night. He’s holding the remote aloft, flicking through the channels, and her eyes are drawn to where his t-shirt has pulled up to reveal the skin of his stomach above his waistband, paler than the tanned flesh of his arms. Yesterday she would have blushed to see it, would have found it almost unbearably intimate, that secret, vulnerable part of him laid bare before her in daylight. Today though, the sight is tainted. Today, she knows firsthand just how delicate that skin is, remembers the surprising softness of it, how his body had felt, held tight between her thighs.

Suddenly all she can think about is her knees chafing against the denim of her jeans, thin skin rubbed raw by the rough material of the couch last night while she rode him. Her stomach drops, a tremor running through her fingers where she’s holding on to the straps of her backpack. 

Octavia barrels past her into the living room, drops heavily into the battered armchair opposite the couch. Clarke’s left hovering in the doorway, not quite sure what to do with herself. There’s no way she can sit on the couch with him. Not now.

“Good day?” Bellamy asks mildly, brow furrowed with concentration as he flicks through the channels at lightning speed. He finally lands on a documentary, something black and white, rows of tanks marching across the screen, and lowers the remote, looking at Octavia. 

“Yeah, it was fun,” Octavia replies. She leans back in the chair, props her feet up on the scuffed coffee table in front of her. “I got some stuff.”

“So I see.” He nods at the shopping bag at Octavia’s feet. “Get anything good?”

She shrugs, rummaging through her shoulder bag for her phone. 

“What about you, Clarke?” He turns to her, lets the remote drop to the floor. 

Bellamy looks tired. She hadn’t noticed earlier, too busy trying to keep it together, but with a pang of guilt she now notices the smudges of grey under his eyes, the slight ashen tint to his skin. 

He smiles at her, but there’s something not quite right about it. The skin around his eyes doesn’t crinkle like it normally does when he’s happy, and there’s a hard set to his jaw, none of the tenderness in his face that she’s come to expect when he looks at her. It’s probably just because he’s tired, but it still sends a shiver running through her.

Her mouth has gone dry. She clears her throat, opens her mouth to reply, but Octavia beats her to it anyway. 

“Clarke didn’t get anything. She did see one thing she liked, but she didn’t go for it in the end. Too fussy.”

Octavia shoots her a loaded look, and Clarke shifts uneasily, still standing awkwardly in the doorway. Bellamy just nods, eyes flicking between the two of them, confused.

The moment stretches out, the three of them caught in an awkward silence until Octavia speaks again. 

“Bell, what are you doing? Shift over, make room for Clarke,” she orders. “Clarke, sit down, you’re freaking me out just standing there.”

Bellamy swings round, lowers his legs to the floor to make room for her. Clarke wants to run, but instead she carefully picks her way over to the couch and sits next to him, heart hammering in her chest. He doesn’t look at her at she sits down, focused on the TV. She thinks she sees a muscle in his jaw twitch, but it happens so quickly she can’t be sure. 

Clarke’s uncomfortably aware of his large body next to her, the heat that radiates off him to match the flush rapidly rising in her cheeks. She can’t relax, sits ramrod straight, knees pressed primly together like a nun, ankles neatly touching. Like if she holds herself perfectly still, she can avoid the memories that are already gathering around her, reaching out for her with grasping fingers. 

Has Bellamy noticed how she’s sitting, like she’ll die if they touch? Can he hear her uneven breathing, the way that each inhale and exhale catches in her chest? 

Paranoia flares, crazy thoughts skittering around the dark corners of her mind. Does he know? Does he suspect? What if Octavia tells him? How is she going to live with this secret hanging over her, the constant threat of being found out? 

Is this what it’s always going to be like now, feeling jumpy and nervous around him, unable to look him in the eye?

Goosebumps prickle over her skin, a feeling like she’s being watched, but when she looks around Bellamy’s eyes are still fixed to the television, Octavia bending over the coffee table to paint her toe nails with one of her new nail varnishes.

Octavia glances up at the TV, brush in hand, and sighs dramatically. “Bell, I’m not watching another documentary about Vietnam. Turn it over.”

“Jesus Christ, O. Are you kidding me? This is WWII - can you seriously not tell the difference between the Viet Cong and fucking Nazis?” Bellamy puts his face in his hands and groans. “What are they even teaching you?”

It’s a classic argument and the siblings slip into it easily, snarking at each other like they have a thousand times before. The soundtrack to Clarke’s childhood. It seems like nothing has really changed after all. 

The thought should be comforting, but it only makes her feel worse. 

\- 

Clarke lies in bed, staring at the wall. She’s so tired she feels like she’s floating, but there’s no way she’s going to sleep tonight. She’s starting to think that she’s never going to sleep again, is going to be awake for every single 2am from now until she dies, doomed to lie in Octavia’s bed and stare blankly at the same poster of Ariana Grande for eternity.

She slides out of bed, careful not to disturb her sleeping friend, and grabs a discarded sweatshirt from the floor to slip over her pyjamas. It’s only once she puts it on that she realises that it’s Bellamy’s, the same one that Octavia was wearing earlier. She leaves it on anyway. It hangs down to mid thigh, past her shorts, sleeves long enough for her to hide her hands in the thick fabric. 

Clarke’s not really sure what she’s going to do, but she knows that if she lies in that bed for one more night she’s going to go mad. The couch is out of the question too. The kitchen then, maybe. 

She creeps out into the hallway, quiet on bare feet. Turns towards the kitchen and stops.

Bellamy’s door is ajar, a sliver of pale yellow light cast out into the darkness. She can hear music, faint and subdued where he’s listening through headphones. He’s still up.

Clarke’s struck by a wild longing. A mad impulse, to go to him. 

She can’t help it. She wishes that she was less pathetic, that she could ignore the voice in her head that tells her that Bellamy will make it better, the voice that insists that all she has to do is go to him and he’ll make everything okay again. 

She remembers the way he looked at her earlier, cold and removed. The panic that had flooded her body, the pain of this new distance between them, the guilt of knowing that it was all her fault. It’s the last thing that she should want, to go to him. 

But it’s not that simple. The events of one night, one day can’t erase the years that Bellamy has always been there for her, steady and sure, endlessly comforting. Her surrogate big brother. Clarke can’t count the number of times he’s cuddled her when she was upset, the thousands of tears he’s wiped from her cheeks with clumsy hands. She might have tried to distance herself from him over the last couple of years, shy and self-conscious, but she still remembers the exact spot where she likes to tuck her face into his neck, how it feels to be folded up in his arms, hidden from the world and completely protected. 

It makes no sense. And more than that - it’s wrong. It’s selfish. She’s hurt him, yet she wants him to comfort her. It’s beyond fucked up. 

There’s no way she can go to him, no matter how much she wants to. No matter how much it hurts to walk past his door.

\- 

Bellamy shuts the cupboard, uninspired by the snack options available. He’s not really hungry anyway, just like he’s not really listening to music, not really reviewing his notes from the lecture earlier this week, not really thirsty for the glass of water he’s holding to his chest. It’s all just empty activity. Going through the motions to distract himself from Clarke. 

Distract himself from the urge to find her and confront her.

Distract himself from the urge to find her, slip to his knees and beg. 

She’ll be asleep now, curled up with Octavia in their shared single bed. Teenage girls, content and callous with youth, two sides of the same thoughtless coin. He wonders if they’d talked about him before they fell asleep, shared giggling notes like schoolgirls cheating on a test, the thrill of broken rules effervescent in their veins like a sugar rush. 

His muscles still ache from earlier, but it’s not enough. Bellamy wants to hit something until his knuckles bleed, until he can’t lift his arms, until he’s worked out all the anger and pain that sits like tar in his chest, black and toxic and too thick to breathe through. Until he’s too exhausted to think, until the fatigue finally overtakes him and he can go to bed without getting caught up in the memory of her soft weight on him, the dirty-innocent feel of her tongue on his skin, the Damascene sight of her cunt stretched around his cock. 

There’s a little noise behind him, a quick _whoosh_ of inhaled air. Not quite a gasp, not quite a sigh. 

Bellamy turns round, and she’s there. 

Clarke. 

He desperately reminds himself that he’s angry with her. That she used him and discarded him, that she doesn’t care about him in the way that he needs her to care about him. But it’s hard to remember all of that when she looks like every fantasy he’s ever had, bare feet and tousled hair and wearing his fucking clothes. 

He hates it, how weak he is for her, even after everything she’s done. 

She looks shocked to see him in the kitchen, pink mouth open in a perfect ‘O’, her hand trembling on the doorframe. 

He wonders if she was hoping to find him asleep again, take a victory lap. 

_Not so easy to deal with when I’m awake, am I, princess?_

“What do you want, Clarke?” he bites out. It’s maybe harsher than he meant to be, definitely harsher than he’s ever spoken to her before. 

It doesn’t matter - she’s a big girl, she can take it. She proved that last night.

Clarke opens her mouth to reply. Closes it again, silently. 

“Spit it out, princess,” he says, pain making him vicious. He sets the glass of water down hard on the counter, takes a step towards her. “I don’t have all night.”

Bellamy barely has time to register the miserable look on Clarke’s face, the dangerous quiver of her lower lip, before she bursts into tears.

Clarke crumples, and he can’t help it, can’t help but rush across the room to catch her, to fold her up in his arms.

She cries, pressing her face into his chest, hands twisting in the fabric of his t-shirt. She’s hyperventilating, wrenching sobs interspersed with rattling breaths and wheezing, and he feels his whole heart give out, his anger evaporating without a trace. She’s so small in his arms, and it hits him again how young she is, how utterly unprepared she is for any of this.

He’s not an idiot. He’s a fucking heartless bastard.

“Hey, hey, shh,” Bellamy soothes, whispering the words into the top of her head as she tucks herself under his chin. Her back shakes with the force of her tears and he wraps his arms tight around her, smoothes a hand down over her ragged blonde hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

Poor baby. He’s meant to be the one that looks after her, but instead he’s spent all day consumed by his own anger, reading her shock as detachment, her guilt as embarrassment. Blaming her for her own inexperience, her own innocence. She couldn’t even deal with having a crush on him - how could he have expected her to handle fucking him? Bellamy should have realised that last night would be too much for her, too many steps at once. His girl has never been one for jumping in the deep end. 

He aches for her even as a small part of him registers how twisted this is, argues that she’s not really the victim here. 

_Is she?_

Bellamy was the one pretending to be asleep. He’s the adult, the one in charge, and he just lay there last night, let Clarke push ahead, break every rule and boundary between them with only Octavia there as her guide. He should have put a stop to it the second he realised that his sister wasn’t alone. 

Isn’t this his fault as much as hers? More so, even?

Clarke cries for whole minutes as Bellamy gently rocks her, murmuring nonsense words to try and calm her down. He closes his eyes, wills himself to get a grip too, his heart pounding in his chest as it gradually sinks in that he hasn’t lost Clarke, that she’s still his girl. He can’t stop himself from pulling her in a little closer, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

Eventually her tears end, breath evening out into something deep and slow as her body relaxes into his. She’s barely upright, clinging to him, relying on him to keep her standing. 

She must be exhausted. It’s been a long day for both of them. 

“C’mon,” Bellamy whispers against her temple, brushing his lips against the thin skin like a kiss. “Let’s snuggle up, yeah?”

It’s pure indulgence to pick Clarke up, to carry her into the living room. He knows that he doesn’t deserve it, not after how he’s treated her today. He’s done nothing to earn the way that she sleepily twines her arms around his neck, rests quiet and still against him as he lifts her with one arm around her back, one under her knees. But he does it anyway, greedy for the feel of her body so close to his, her renewed openness to him. He feels like he’s been handed a second chance with Clarke, and he’s going to make sure that he does it right this time. 

She’s so light when he picks her up, weighs almost nothing as he navigates them through the small doorway. Like she’ll blow away if he doesn’t hold on.

Bellamy thinks that the couch might be a bit of a no-go zone for them, at least for a while, so instead he sits in the armchair, settles her in his lap. It takes some awkward manoeuvring, Clarke grumbling sleepily as he bends forward, but he manages to snag the blanket off the couch and drape it over both of them. He props his feet on the coffee table, leans back and shifts down a little, just a touch more horizontal than vertical. 

Clarke curls up on top of him like a kitten, face pressed into the side of his neck, knees drawn up into her chest. He’s got one arm curled around her body, his other hand cupping her cold feet, rubbing them to warm them up. Her little toes wriggle against his palm, and he feels a rush of love for her so strong his chest gets tight.

He breathes her in as she falls asleep on him. She smells overly sweet, like the drugstore body spray that teenage girls always seem to wear instead of perfume. He’s swept back to his high school days, synthetic vanilla and fumbled hand jobs in the back of his beat-up car. White cotton panties and curfews, hands tentatively reaching under cheerleader skirts and bouncing blonde ponytails. 

“Princess,” Bellamy whispers into her hair. 

It blows his mind a little, how easily she’s just fallen asleep on top of him, even after what she did to him last night. Trusting her whole body to him, unthinking, the thought never occurring to her to be scared of him. 

He lets his hand wander up from her feet, up along her calf and thigh, under his sweatshirt until his fingers rest on the dull point of her hip bone. Her breathing doesn’t change when he moves his hand slowly, carefully across, lets himself work his hand between her thighs to gently cup her cunt through her pyjama shorts. He’s a little disappointed that she’s wearing clothes under his sweatshirt, but he can still feel the heat of her through the fabric, an answering heat in his own body as he wonders if she’s still got his come inside of her. 

Bellamy doesn’t know if Clarke’s on the pill. He assumes that she is - can’t imagine that the unsentimental, eminently practical Dr Abby Griffin wouldn’t have put her daughter on birth control the second that it became a concern. Clarke probably isn’t pregnant. He reminds himself that that’s a good thing, even as his gut clenches at the idea of his girl fucked full, leaky tits and tight round belly. There’s plenty of time for that later. Right now, he wants it to be just the two of them for a while. 

He holds her whole cunt in his hand, rubs her clit with the heel of his palm. Her breath hitches in her sleep, stutters against his neck.

If this was a bad porno, this is where he’d get his revenge. Do to her what she did to him. But in real life, Bellamy knows, there’s no way that Clarke would sleep through what he’d like to do to her. 

\- 

It’s either very late or very early when Clarke wakes up. She opens her eyes to the feathery grey light of dawn filtering in through the living room curtains, illuminating the armchair where she lies cuddled up with Bellamy.

Awareness comes in slowly, like adding layers to a painting, just forms and colours first before the details start to appear. Bellamy’s body beneath her, warm and solid and comfortable. His big arms wrapped around her, keeping her safe, stopping her from falling while she slept. The movement of his chest beneath her as he breathes, firm muscle against her cheek, the cotton of his t-shirt under her cheek and clasped between her fingers. 

Dimly Clarke thinks that she should move, that Bellamy can’t be possibly comfortable with her dead weight on top of him, the way she’s huddled up against him, every part of her tucked in close and snug like she’s been seeking out his touch even in her sleep. She should be embarrassed about her emotional breakdown in the kitchen, for falling asleep on him like this. God knows she has enough things to apologise to him for already without adding to the list, without finding all new ways to take advantage of him. 

But all her problems seem far away and remote, feel like someone else’s concern, someone else’s business. It’s difficult to feel anything but deeply comforted when she’s lying here with Bellamy, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against her ear to ground her. Impossible to think that there are any problems anywhere, that the world could be anything less than perfect when she’s just woken up in his arms. She wonders if he slept at all, or if he’s spent the past few hours awake, just holding her. Something in her warms at the thought, and she can’t resist snuggling into him, rubbing her nose against the cotton of his t-shirt.

Too late she realises her mistake.

“You awake, princess?” Bellamy rumbles. His voice is even deeper than usual, rough with sleep and the early hour. Or perhaps it just sounds deeper from where she lies on top of him, his hard chest rumbling under her cheek. His arms tighten around her, one hand coming up to rub her shoulder gently. 

She shakes her head against his chest, nonsensically, and Bellamy laughs.

“Okay, babe. Not awake, I get it.”

Clarke risks a glance upwards, only to meet his eyes, warm and fond where he’s looking down at her. She blushes, full up with so many emotions she doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to process them. She wants to cry from sheer relief just looking at the crinkles around his eyes as he smiles, a real smile this time, for her. 

Maybe she hasn’t ruined everything after all. 

“Look at you.” Bellamy whispers the words so quiet she isn’t sure if he even meant her to hear them, the boundary between thought and speech blurring in the intimacy of early morning. He cradles her cheek with his hand, runs his thumb along her cheekbone. She bites her lip and his eyes track the movement, hand moving down so he can run his thumb over that too, pulling down until her lip comes free, swollen and damp. 

Clarke doesn’t know what she’s doing, feels half-mad and ridiculous when she pouts, pressing a kiss against his thumb where it rests against her mouth. It would be another thing to apologise for if she couldn’t see the heat it kindles in his eyes, hear his breath quickening.

It’s only seeing his reaction that makes her realise how wet she is. Shameful, considering she’s barely wearing anything under his sweatshirt, the thin cotton of her shorts the only thing that’s stopping her from staining his jeans. Shameful, too, how she has to fight the urge to squirm against him, rock against his body until she comes, panting into his chest.

Bellamy’s eyes only get more intense as he looks at her, like he can see everything she’s thinking, all the things she wants to do with him. 

He pulls his hand away from her mouth and tickles her side lightly, just enough to make her jump. 

“Come on, princess. Up you get.”

Stubbornly she doesn’t move. If anything she clings even more to him, doesn’t want to get up yet. He sighs but she can tell it’s just for show, that he doesn’t want to move either, not really.

He cups her face in his palms, drops a kiss to her forehead to placate her, but it’s too quick for her to fully appreciate it. 

“We have to get up,” he says, his lips still close enough that she can feel his breath on her skin. “I’m an old man now, I can’t sleep here all night.”

The niggle of guilt his words provoke is enough to get her moving. Clarke gets to her feet, wobbly where her legs are weak from sleep and being curled up for so long. She’s already cold, missing the heat and the reassurance of his body, shame and regret already rushing in to fill the empty space left vacate by his touch. Worried he can see the shine of wetness on her thighs, she tangles her fingers in the hem of his sweatshirt, discretely trying to pull it down a little further. 

Bellamy stands, cricks his neck, stretches his arms up above his head with a satisfied groan. He’s so much taller than her, tips of his fingers almost touching the ceiling. Clarke stares up at him, a little awed by him, all her defences demolished by sleep, feeling exposed and vulnerable. 

“Need anything?”

He grins when Clarke shakes her head, shakes his own head to mimic her. She blinks in surprise when he reaches out and untangles her fingers from the sweatshirt, takes her hand in his. 

“Come on.”

Bellamy leads her out of the living room and into the hallway, still holding her hand. She’s expecting him to take her back to the room she shares with Octavia, is already tightening her grip on him in protest, but he leads her to his room instead. She almost trips over in shock. 

The light’s still on in his room from earlier, laptop whirring, tinny music playing through abandoned headphones. There’s a mess of books and papers scattered across his desk, an uncapped yellow highlighter on top. She loiters in the doorway as he shuts everything off, moves a pile of laundry from his bed to the chair, turns down the sheets. He takes off his watch and lays it carefully on his bedside table, then pauses, hands on his belt buckle.

“Okay if I take my jeans off?” he asks softly. She can’t see his face clearly, his bedroom darker than the living room, but she can hear the concern in his voice. 

Clarke nods. “Okay.”

She’s never seen a man get undressed before. Bellamy’s belt clinks as he strips off his jeans and hangs them on the back of his desk chair. He’s wearing black boxer briefs, but she only sees them for second, barely a glimpse of his muscular legs before he sits down on the bed. He pulls his socks off, leaves his t-shirt on. 

Clarke knows that she shouldn’t get in bed with him. Bellamy doesn’t know what she’s done, what kind of person she really is. And she knows, with all the certainty of a real coward, that she will never tell him. She can’t even begin to imagine a world, a reality in which she would confess what she’s done to him. 

Getting in bed with him would just be another betrayal. It would be cruel. Any relationship they build now is doomed from the beginning, could never be sustained, built on a foundation of deceit. It’ll be easier for both of them if she stops it before it goes any further. 

But when Bellamy gets into bed and holds out his arms for her, she goes to him anyway. 

It turns out that she didn’t need Octavia after all. She’s perfectly capable of making bad decisions on her own. 

Clarke stops next to the bed, hesitates for a second. Bellamy’s hand twitches on the covers, and she knows that he thinks she’s going to change her mind, is fighting the impulse to reach out for her. It makes her braver, the confirmation that he wants her. It doesn’t make what she did any less awful - it will always be unforgivable - but it makes the guilt easier to bear, somehow. It lightens the burden a little, so that she’s not quite so bowed under the weight of it anymore.

Before she loses her nerve, she pulls off his sweatshirt, stands there in just a pair of shorts and a tank top. She shivers, grateful for the darkness that’s hiding her slick thighs, her hard nipples. She feels rather than sees Bellamy’s desire, like someone’s turned up a dial somewhere, the atmosphere in the room heavier, richer.

The sheets are cold when she slips in next to Bellamy, but he reaches for her immediately, drags her across the bed and into his arms. She goes easily, like she weighs less than air. They end up face to face, her head pillowed on his bicep, his other hand on her waist. Their legs are tangled together, and the coarse hair on his legs is a surprise to her, used to Octavia’s smooth skin. 

She reaches up, runs her hand through the mess of his dark hair, the tangles and curls that frame his face, soften all his hard lines. Men are meant to be handsome, and Bellamy is, but she thinks that he’s beautiful too. 

He turns his head, nuzzles her hand on the downstroke, his dry lips brushing along the inside of her wrist.

Bellamy’s so big, so much older than her. It does something to her insides, to know how strong he is, how experienced he is, and yet to also know somehow that she’s the one in control of him. Not just last night, but here, now, his dark eyes intent on her face like he can’t bear to look away. 

“I love you,” she whispers, overcome by him. 

His reply is instantaneous, unthinking. 

“I love you too.”

\- 

Maybe for some people, that would be the end of the story. 

But that’s never been the issue for them. That they love each other has never been in doubt. It’s the depth and the breadth and the height of that love that has yet to be fully defined, the lengths to which they’d both go to get it, to keep it.

\- 

Clarke knows that Bellamy is going to kiss her, even before he leans in. But it’s still the best kind of shock, his mouth on hers.

The kiss trips over the line from chaste to obscene in seconds. They’re barely kissing before she’s opening her mouth, his tongue sliding along hers, his big hands already wound tight in her hair, the sting of it making her gasp into him. Clarke puts her own hands on the back of his neck and digs in her nails until he groans, their bodies so close that she feels it reverberate in her own chest. 

She doesn’t want to tell him how she feels. She doesn’t want words. Words could only dilute the way that she’s feeling, tame it into something easily understood and contained. She wants to make him feel it with her, the terrifying and indescribable whole of it, love and pain and lust fused together into some new element that only exists in the shivering of her nerves under her skin, the blood pounding between her legs, the breath shared between their mouths.

Bellamy’s hand leaves her hair, grabs her thigh, yanks it up so she’s got one leg slung up around his waist. Clarke gasps when he fits himself into the cradle of her hips, the hard length of his cock right up against her pussy through his underwear, the wet fabric of her shorts no barrier at all, the whole thing somehow dirtier than if they’d just been naked. She’s not prepared, not ready when he starts to move, grinding against her, hitting her clit just right so she has to drag her mouth away from his, her open mouth lax against his cheek. He doesn’t go easy on her, doesn’t give her a second of reprieve, only bends his head to suck a vicious mark into the space where her neck meets her shoulder, tongue darting out over already sensitive skin until her fingers fall away from his neck, tremble uselessly against his shoulders, barely holding on to him. 

She’d always thought that sex would be - beautiful. Sinuous, rhythmic, coordinated. Two bodies elevated above the physical into the spiritual. Two souls escaping the confines of mere flesh and blood to create something new and magical together, something immortal, removed from space and time. Communion.

This is nothing like that. Clarke doesn’t feel elevated - she feels animalistic, debased, desperate. She’s never been so aware of her body, the brute mechanics of it, pressure and movement, sensation slamming into her with all the spiritual grace and elegance of a collision. There’s no escape from the overwhelming physicality of it, the embarrassing sounds that are torn from her, whines and groans and whimpers that she tries to hide in the pillow until Bellamy realises what she’s doing, pulls away from her neck to press their foreheads together, force her noises out into the open where he can swallow them whole. 

Bellamy doesn’t let up, rocks against her mercilessly, ruthlessly, his fingers pressing bruises into her thigh where he holds her against him.

When Clarke comes, it feels wrenched from her. Bellamy thrusts, her shorts moving to the side so his cock is right _there_ , his underwear the only thing that stops him from slipping inside her, filling her up like she craves. It’s that - the frantic need to be full of him, the feel of the rough cotton of his underwear against her clit, the tiniest amount of discomfort to offset the overwhelming pleasure - that tips her over, sparks her orgasm.

Clarke moans as it crashes over her, a high pitched whining noise that cuts through the sound of Bellamy’s heavy breathing, the slick noises of him grinding against her cunt. She feels the harsh exhale against her skin as Bellamy grins, imagines the fierce look on his face, the sharp possessiveness in his eyes as he watches her come. 

She comes back to herself gradually, only vaguely aware of Bellamy brushing a kiss across her slack mouth, smoothing her damp hair back and away from her face. He moves them so he’s lying on his back, her body huddled up against his side, head resting on his chest. 

Bellamy catches her hand as she reaches for his cock, pulls it up to his mouth instead, kisses her palm. She grumbles, sleepy but annoyed. 

_“Go to sleep, sweetheart.”_

She wants to protest, but she’s already asleep.

\- 

Sunday dawns unseasonably hot and sunny. 

Bellamy complains about climate change and global warming all through breakfast, even brings up a story on his phone about glaciers to show an unimpressed Octavia, but it’s all a front. Clarke can feel his good mood radiating from him, hear the cheerful lilt to his voice, the almost-smile playing around the corners of his mouth even as he talks about the Paris Agreement and 45. 

It matches her own mood, the happiness that’s bubbling through her, almost impossible to hide although she tries her hardest to keep a straight face. She catches herself humming while she eats, looks up to find Bellamy watching her, amused.

“I’m going round to see Miller,” Bellamy tells them after they’ve eaten. He’s washing up, elbows deep in soapy water. Clarke is standing next to him, drying the dishes he hands her, eager for the slightest contact, any excuse to stay close to him. “Will you two be alright for few hours on your own?”

Clarke has her back to Octavia where she’s sat at the kitchen table, but she can _hear_ her friend rolling her eyes as she replies. “We’re fifteen, Bell. I’m pretty sure you can leave us alone in our own house for a few hours in the middle of the day.”

“I know exactly how old you are, O,” Bellamy replies. His eyes flicker up to meet Clarke’s, something in them that makes her want to blush. “I’m just checking you don’t need me for anything today.”

“We’ll probably just lay out in the yard and sunbathe. What do you think, Clarke?”

“Sounds good,” Clarke agrees easily, carefully taking a wet frying pan from Bellamy. He waits until she’s got her hands full then flicks water at her from the sink, grins at her expression.

Bellamy turns his head to look at Octavia over his shoulder.

“I’m assuming you mean after you’ve done your homework, of course.” 

Octavia scoffs.

“And there’s sun block in the bathroom,” he points at her, narrowing his eyes. “Make sure you put some on.”

“I don’t need it,” his sister corrects him. “I don’t burn. I’ve got olive skin, I just tan.”

“That’s definitely not a thing. You need to wear sun block.”

Octavia huffs, put out. “Fine.”

Bellamy turns back to the sink, lowers his voice so only Clarke can hear him. “You too, princess. Don’t want you getting sore.”

She remembers waking up with him this morning, opening her eyes to find him already awake, watching her sleep. The first time she tried to get up, how he’d pulled her back to him, held on like he never wanted to let go, dropping kisses along the nape of her neck as she squirmed, gently sucking against the marks he’d left on her skin the night before until she gave up and melted back into him. The words he’d whispered into her ear, hands tight around her waist under her tank top, thumbs just brushing the underside of her breasts.

_“Stay with me tonight.”_

Clarke stutters, fumbles the plate she’s holding, slippery and wet in her hands, and drops it. It shatters on impact, shards of china skidding across the kitchen floor.

Octavia whoops, delighted, and claps her hands. 

\- 

Bellamy pointedly leaves the sunblock out on the kitchen table before he goes. Octavia ignores it, but Clarke picks it up and takes it out to the backyard where her friend is already laying out on a towel, face propped up on her hands. 

She groans when she sees the lotion in Clarke’s hands. “You’re such a teacher’s pet.” 

Clarke shrugs, picks her way over to stand on the towel next to Octavia. “You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. But Bell’s right, I’ll burn otherwise.”

She pulls off her leggings, leaving her in a cropped t-shirt and panties. For the first time she’s grateful for her big breasts - Octavia already knows how uncomfortable she is about them, won’t be surprised if Clarke doesn’t take her t-shirt off. And there’s no way that Clarke can sunbathe in just a bra, not with the dark bruise that Bellamy’s sucked into the side of her neck, just low enough to be hidden by her top. 

Her best friend has no such concerns, wearing a tiny bikini that shows off her neat little body, every modest curve easily contained by the brightly coloured skimpy fabric. It’s still too cold for a bikini really, but Octavia is always happiest when she feels like she’s breaking a rule. 

Clarke uncaps the lotion, starts pouring it into her palm, but she halts when Octavia flicks her ankle, staring up at her from the towel.

“Get down here, I’ll do it.”

Clarke readily complies, lying down on her front, pillowing her face on her folded arms. 

“God, it’s like factor 50,” Octavia complains as she looks at the bottle, getting up on her knees next to Clarke. “You could literally go and sit in the oven with this stuff on.”

Clarke laughs. “That’s Bellamy for you.”

“Yeah, that’s my big brother.”

She yelps as the cold lotion suddenly hits her skin, pooling in the small of her back. She raises up on her elbows, twisting round to glare at Octavia.

“O! You’re meant to warm it in your hands first!”

Octavia giggles, unabashed. “It’s fine, you big baby.” She pushes Clarke back down with a surprisingly strong hand on her shoulder. “Now lie still.”

It’s relaxing, lying there in the warm sun, Octavia’s hands working firmly over her body. Clarke almost drifts off as her friend massages her, the lotion quickly warming up, that distinctive sunblock smell filling her senses, no sound but the distant noise of children playing on the street outside. The heat makes her lazy, one thought gradually fading into another, a liminal state of existence somewhere between awake and asleep.

Clarke lets her mind wander, thinks about tonight, being with Bellamy again, the anticipation pooling in her belly at the thought of his hands on her, his clever, brutal mouth. Memories slide into fantasies, slide into dreams. She’s still a little sore between her legs, but maybe it will have faded by tonight. She crosses her fingers, secretly, where they’re tucked under her folded arms. 

She’s floating, caught off guard when Octavia speaks.

“How are you feeling today?”

Clarke hums, considering. She can barely remember yesterday, all her thoughts somewhere else. Her face is still hidden in her arms when she speaks, the sound muffled.

“I’m feeling okay. I’m sorry if I was weird yesterday.”

Octavia leans back, pours more lotion into her hands, starts on Clarke’s calves and feet. Clarke’s toes twitch as her friend’s fingers run along the sensitive soles of her feet, and Octavia grabs her little toe, wiggles it like she’s playing a nursery game.

“Good,” Octavia’s voice is sweet and soft, but there’s something under it that sets alarm bells ringing in Clarke’s mind, cuts through her dreamlike state. “I was worried about you. I forgot how seriously you take everything.”

“I was just a bit freaked out,” Clarke turns her head so she can see Octavia, the concentration on her face as she rubs the sun block into Clarke’s legs. “And tired.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” Octavia makes a thoughtful noise, trails one finger up the back of Clarke’s thigh. “It’s just - ” 

She stops, sits back on her heels, sighs heavily.

“I know you have a thing for Bellamy,” her friend says, blunt as ever.

The sun beats down, almost too hot for comfort. Tiny droplets of sweat start to collect on Clarke’s forehead, her upper lip. When she opens her mouth, she tastes salt. 

Flustered, she searches for an explanation, a rebuttal. “Octavia, I - ”

Octavia holds up a hand, and Clarke falls silent. 

“It’s fine. I mean, he’s a complete dork, but you are too, so I guess it makes sense.” Octavia smiles, but there’s nothing friendly in it. She speaks slowly, kindly, like she’s explaining something difficult to a small child. 

“I just wanted to say to you - what happened on Friday, you know it doesn’t mean anything, right? You’re not like, with him now or anything. He doesn’t even know it happened.”

Clarke nods, her heart in her throat. She feels vulnerable, lying in front of Octavia, her friend kneeling above her. Like a prey animal, with her belly exposed in front of a predator.

“Good,” Octavia exhales heavily, grins, outwardly relieved. “I just didn’t want you to, y’know, get your hopes up or anything. Not that anything could happen anyway. He’s my brother.”

She laughs.

“Anyway. Turn over,” Octavia slaps her ass lightly. “Let me do your front.”

\- 

It’s just after midnight when the quiet knock comes on Bellamy’s door. 

He’s been waiting for a while, had excused himself to his room right after dinner on the flimsy pretext of a college assignment, only to come and sit on his bed with an unread book in his hands, daydream about what he’s going to do to Clarke the moment he gets her behind a closed door. Every way he’s going to touch her, every part of her he’s going to taste, every sound he’s going to pull from her until there’s nothing left of either of them but sensation and pleasure and blind need, the rest of the world fading away. 

Bellamy could say that he’s been waiting all day for her, has spent every second since he got out of bed with Clarke just wanting to get back into it. Watching her at breakfast had almost driven him mad with lust - his girl, so adorable, so sweet in her happiness that he’d practically had to sit on his hands to stop himself pulling her into his lap right there at the table, sinking his teeth into her instead of the food. He’d had to go round to Miller’s apartment just to get out of there before he lost his damn mind. It hadn’t quite worked - had only displaced his obsession instead of decreasing it - hadn’t stopped him thinking of her, the whole day spent imagining her soft body in the sun, the smell of sunblock on her warm skin, tracing tan lines with the very tip of his tongue. 

But really it feels like Bellamy’s been waiting his whole life for this, when he gets up to open the door and finds Clarke there on the other side.

\- -

Bellamy’s on Clarke as soon as she steps in the room, almost lifting her off her feet with the force of his kiss, done with waiting. She’s just as needy as he is, her little mouth opening for him with a pretty gasp as he works his hands up under her tank top, fits his hands around her hips, his fingers just grazing under the waistband of her shorts. He’d worry about scaring her, but she gives as good as she gets, his baby-ferocious girl, yanks his mouth down to hers and scrapes her teeth over his lip until he growls and picks her up, backing her into the door. 

He leans back a little, not enough to let her fall, just enough to see her face, open and desperate for him, her mouth already swollen and wet, those blue eyes heavy lidded and tipping closed as she arches her back against the door, bares her neck to him. 

“Fuck,” Bellamy rasps out, fits his mouth to her neck, feral and possessive at the sight of his mark on her. “Look at you, princess, been driving me insane all day.”

Clarke’s legs are wrapped around him, feet crossed at the small of his back, and he’s powerless to stop himself thrusting against her, already so hard he’s shaking with it. He can’t remember how he survived without being able to touch her. She whimpers, her fingers digging into his shoulders, ten hard little points of pressure that spur him on, wind him up with lust, and he works his way up her neck with biting kisses, stopping only to whisper filth in her ear.

“How can I think about anything else, baby, huh? How am I supposed to think about anything except getting my hands on you?” He tugs her earlobe with his teeth, shocks a little whine out of her for his trouble. 

Clarke moans, rocks against him, trying to get more pressure on her clit, and he takes pity on her, rests his weight more heavily against her so she can grind against him close and tight the way she likes. He likes it too, likes her greedy and frantic, likes it when she takes what she needs from him. Likes seeing her wrecked, undone by how much she needs him.

Bellamy kisses her again, deep and slow, gentle now in contrast to how she’s moving against him. Takes his time exploring her mouth, her tongue, her sharp little teeth. He runs his hands up her legs all the way from her smooth calves to her plush tummy, skims his hands up and over her sides over her top, just grazing the sides of her tits with his hands, revelling in the feel of her. 

She tenses, just slightly, and Bellamy freezes, pulls back, lifts his hands off her body.

“Princess?” 

Clarke bites her lip, shakes her head like it’s nothing. She tries to tug him back down to her but it’s laughably easy to resist, to pull her hands away from the back of his neck, capture them in his own and kiss them. Like disarming a kitten. 

“What’s wrong?” he repeats.

“Nothing,” she replies, but there’s already a blush rising along her cheekbones, and she won’t look directly at him, shifts uneasily against the door when he releases one hand to put his knuckle under her chin and tilt her face up.

“Do you want to stop?” he asks, voice as gentle as he can make it. “Babe, say one word and we’ll stop.”

“No,” she insists, voice trembling. “I want to.”

Bellamy lifts her away from the door, unwinds her legs from his waist despite her resistance, the way she tries to hold on to him. Kisses Clarke once, light and reassuring, and carefully lowers her back down to the carpet.

“Talk to me,” he coaxes her once she’s back on solid ground again. “Tell me what’s going on in that mind of yours.”

He cradles her face in his hands, forces her to look at him properly. Her expression is pitiful, eyes already wet, tears making them shine even bluer, lashes dark and clumped together so her eyes seem to take up her whole face. She’s so beautiful like this, even if he feels like a pervert for thinking so. 

Clarke is awkward under his gaze, his undivided attention. 

“Do you think…” she falters, voice trailing off, eyes glancing away, but then she swallows heavily and carries on. “Do you think my breasts are too big?”

His first, horrible impulse is to laugh. It’s ludicrous. Ridiculous, to think that anything about her could be anything but perfect. Especially her gorgeous tits. But then he sees the serious look on her face, the little furrow between her eyes, how her lower lip trembles until she presses her lips together into a hard straight line. 

Bellamy wants to know if Clarke will ever stop finding new ways to break his heart.

“I think you’re perfect, Clarke,” he tells her, just as serious. “I think every part of you is perfect. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

She squirms, and he lets her go, lets her bury her face into his chest and hide. He puts his arms around her, rests his chin on the top of her head, lips against her hair.

“You don’t think that they’re…too much?” she forces out. “Like, they make me look cheap?”

Bellamy grits his teeth, grateful that Clarke can’t see him. It’s funny, how sometimes Clarke opens her mouth but it’s Abby’s words that come out. He can’t believe how much he hates her mother sometimes, the scars that she’s left on his girl. 

It’s okay though. Clarke’s got him to look after her now. 

He tamps down the anger in his chest, keeps his voice deliberately calm when he replies. “No. I think you’re beautiful just the way you are.”

Clarke snorts against his chest in disbelief. He can’t stand it.

“Come on.”

Bellamy walks over to his bed and sits down, pulls her to stand in between his legs. 

“Give me a kiss, princess.”

Clarke’s taller than him like this, and he has to lean up to catch her mouth. Bellamy kisses her carefully, tenderly, pours everything he feels into it until he feels her start to melt, her mouth going soft against his, hands curling into his hair. She pants a little when he ends the kiss, sways on her feet when he pulls back, has to put her hands on his shoulders for balance. 

Her eyes are still closed when Bellamy trails his mouth down her neck, over her shoulders, down her chest. Little kisses, as gentle as he can make them, nothing alarming. He slowly smoothes his hands up the outside of her thighs, round and over her ass, making her smile, then back to her sides, takes the bottom of her tank top in his hands. 

“Show me?” Bellamy asks, heart thudding in his chest. 

She nods her permission, and he pulls up, guides her top up and over her head, Clarke’s blonde hair falling back around her face like a halo. He holds eye contact with her, waits for her to start breathing again before he looks down. 

Clarke’s breasts are beautiful, just like the rest of her. The skin of her breasts is so pale it’s almost translucent, her nipples the lightest, most delicate pink, like spun sugar petals, like they’d dissolve sweet on his tongue. There’s a vein running along the underside of one of her breasts, just visible through her skin, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from reaching out and following the path of it with his finger. Her tits hang a little heavy on her tiny frame in a perfect generous curve that looks like it was built to fit his hand.

“What do you think?” Clarke whispers. 

He’s ashamed at how long it takes him to drag his eyes back up to her face. 

“You’re gorgeous, sweetheart,” Bellamy forces out, throat dry and voice gone to gravel. He feels dizzy with lust. “Can I touch you?”

Clarke nods. Thank god.

He reaches up, lightly brushes the curve of her breasts with the very tips of his fingers. “Okay?”

Clarke nods again. Bellamy couldn’t have known how far down her blushes go, how the pink of it colours the top of her chest as well as her cheeks, the exact same shade as her nipples. He’s never going to be able to see her blush again in public without embarrassing himself.

Every single part of Clarke seems perfectly designed to destroy him, and he can’t tell if it’s a reward or a punishment.

This time Bellamy’s a bit firmer, lets himself touch her tits properly, feel the weight of them in his hands, circle her nipples with his thumbs until they stiffen under his touch, Clarke’s breath starting to quicken. 

“Does it feel good?” he asks. 

‘Uh huh,” Clarke mumbles, so quiet he can barely hear it.

“Use your words, babe,” he encourages her, needs to know that she wants this as much as he does. “Tell me how it feels.” 

“It feels good,” she answers, her voice husky with arousal and embarrassment. 

It does something to him, her embarrassment. Drives him crazy, making her a little bit uneasy, getting her out of her comfort zone, watching her blush and squirm, the tiniest tremor evident in her voice when she answers him. Her nervousness is delicious, the way she hovers between confidence and shyness, desire battling with her natural timidity.

He’d die before he hurt her. But he can’t deny how hard he is right now, how hot it gets him, watching her fall to pieces. She might have fucked him already, but in every other way he can imagine she’s untouched, and it’s intoxicating, almost frustratingly sexy. 

Bellamy drags her closer, gets his mouth on her. Sucks one of her nipples while he plays the other between his finger and thumb, pulls it gently. She moans, her hands flying to his hair to hold him in place, nails scratching his scalp. When he looks up her mouth is open in shock and she’s watching him, her eyes a dark electric blue.

He releases her nipple, grins when she tightens her fingers in his hair, tries to pull him back. 

“Tell me,” he urges. 

Clarke groans, closes her eyes. “I like it when you touch my nipples. It makes - it makes me wet.”

Bellamy could fuck a thousand women and never be as turned on as he is hearing those stumbling words from Clarke. 

He rewards her by switching nipples, licking and sucking and even - once, very carefully - biting down until she cries out, pulls his hair and makes him hiss against her skin. 

“Bell,” Clarke whines after only a couple of minutes. “Please.” 

“Please what, sweetheart?” Bellamy mouthes his way down her torso, takes the soft swell of her tummy between his teeth, licks a line just above her waistband to make her jolt. “What do you want, baby?”

“Please, touch me,” she begs. “Please, just, touch - ”

He’s going to combust. He’s going to fucking die. 

Bellamy lets his hand trace lower down, plays with the ribbon tie of her pyjama shorts, tugs on it to tease her. She huffs, annoyed.

He tuts, ignores her sulky glare. “Patience, princess.”

Bellamy reaches inside, pleased when he finds that Clarke’s not shaved, runs his fingers down through the tuft of her pubic hair to find her clit. 

She’s so wet he groans, loses control, his fingers skidding over slick skin, sliding over sensitive folds, circling the hard bud of her clit for only a second at a time before he moves his fingers away again, winding her up too fast until she’s breathing in hiccups and gasps, every other breath a ragged moan. 

“Jesus, Clarke, so wet for me huh?” He presses the words into her skin with his mouth, every syllable a biting kiss, a new bruise.

Bellamy taps lightly against her clit with the flat of two fingers, almost comes at the sound she makes, the shocked whine that gets caught in her throat. 

“That feel good, sweetheart?” He mouthes her nipple, overwhelmed by all the things that he wants to do to her. Bellamy doesn’t know where to start, wants to do everything at once, would happily spend the rest of his life doing just this forever. 

He rubs her clit, flicks back and forth with his finger until he can feel she’s on the edge, then goes even lower, seeking out where she’s wet and open for him.

But Bellamy barely touches her before Clarke hisses in pain and jumps, her thighs clamping around his hand. 

“You okay?” he asks, startled, looking up.

The expression on Clarke’s face is just as alarmed as he feels, her eyes round and wide.

“Clarke? Are you alright?” He sits back, pulls his hand out of her shorts, worried. “Did I hurt you? What did I - ”

“It’s just - ,” she blurts out, stops him mid-sentence. Squeezes her eyes shut with obvious mortification. “No one’s ever touched me there before.”

Clarke has never been able to lie to him. She couldn’t lie to him when she was eight years old, standing in front of a broken window, and she can’t lie to him now, standing half naked and half undone in front of him, her nipples still wet from his mouth. 

She’s beautifully transparent to him, and even if she wasn’t, Bellamy knows exactly what her pained hiss signifies. He’s watched enough girls stagger out of his bed the morning after, looking like they’ve been hit by a truck, to tell what’s wrong with her.

Clarke’s sore from him.

If Bellamy thought he was turned on before, it doesn’t even touch how he feels now, the shameful lust that almost takes him over as he remembers that it was Clarke’s first time only two nights ago. Remembers her straddling him, the easy way she’d slid down onto his cock, so wet it was almost effortless, the sight of her cunt stretched around him, impossible, perfect. His greedy Clarke, too desperate for him inside her to take it slow. She’s so little, and he’s not exactly average sized. 

He pushes down the sick thrill that rushes through him with the knowledge of how thoroughly he’s left his mark on her. 

This is it. This is Bellamy’s chance to come clean, tell her that he knows exactly what she did to him, confess what he’s done to her in turn. Make the difficult choice. Not to redeem himself - he’s come too far for that. They both have. But to give her a choice, a real choice, a chance to reject him, walk away from all this. Or to choose him, knowing just who he is. 

He’s the grown up here. He needs to put a stop to this before it goes too far.

Bellamy rests his head against her stomach, waiting until his breathing is back to something resembling normal before he speaks. What he says next will change everything between them forever. 

It’s a long, quiet minute before he opens his mouth again. 

“Do you trust me?” he asks. 

It’s not a fair question to ask. Of course Clarke trusts him - she’s spent almost her whole life trusting him. Depending on him in a million different ways from the mundane to the profound, relying on him to take care of her, keep her safe. She’s never had the option of not trusting him. 

The real question is, should she trust him? And the way Bellamy feels right now - insane with how much he wants her, broken with the brutal knowledge of all the things he’d do just to have her - he’s not so sure that she should. 

“Yes,” she answers, like he always knew she would. 

He stands up next to her, gives her a quick kiss, nudges his nose against hers. 

“Lie down, baby.”

He watches as Clarke gets on the bed. Resists the urge to stroke himself, watching her cute ass wiggle as she crawls up the mattress. She flops onto her back, props herself up on her elbows so she can see him, smiles tentative and sweet. 

Bellamy can’t begin to untangle everything he feels for her, the Gordian knot of emotions in his chest when he looks at her. She’s the most adorable thing he’s ever seen, and he wants to do things to her that haven’t even been invented yet. He’d kill just to get his mouth on her cunt. 

He takes off his shirt, follows her up on to the bed. Reaches for her shorts, glances up to meet her eyes.

She looks so nervous, his shy girl. He wishes it didn’t turn him on so much. 

“Let’s get these off, yeah?”

Clarke nods, lower lip held between her teeth, words apparently lost to her again. She falls back onto the pillow with a heavy thump as he starts to pull her shorts down, too embarrassed or too turned on to carry on watching him. He throws the shorts over his shoulder somewhere behind him, doesn’t care where they land. 

Bellamy bends down to kiss her warm stomach, rubs his face against the downy soft skin. Runs his hands firmly up the outside of her thighs, taps the inside of her knee to get her to open up for him. 

He groans so loudly at the sight of her cunt that she jolts, instinctively tries to close her legs, but the bulk of his body between her thighs holds her open for him. 

“Shhh,” he soothes, despite the furious thundering of his heartbeat in his ears. He nuzzles against her thigh to comfort her. “You’re okay, princess.”

He always knew that Clarke would have the most perfect little cunt. A whole new shade of pink, just for him.

Bellamy can see where she’s sore, can see where pink skin is tinged a little darker, the delicate flesh a little irritated, a little chafed. No wonder she’s aching. Looking at her now, he has no idea how he ever fit inside her. 

He leans forward, uses just the very tip of his tongue to trace over where she looks sorest. She bucks under him, over sensitised and tender, and he has to press her back down on the mattress, hands heavy on her hips.

“Sorry, baby. I’ll be gentle, I promise.”

Bellamy starts again, takes it slower. Spreads her open with his thumbs, every part of her exposed to his mouth, and kisses her cunt gently, almost sweetly. Focuses on her clit, gets her nice and warmed up, just starting to rock very slightly against his face, thigh muscles trembling where they rest on his shoulders. 

He can feel how unsure she is, not used to the unfamiliar feeling, the new and devastating intimacy of his mouth on her cunt. She’s inexperienced, still too polite and reserved to properly ride his face the way he wants her to. 

One day soon Bellamy is going to get her sitting on his face. Get her riding him, using him like she did on Friday night, lost in her own pleasure - except this time he’ll be awake to properly enjoy it. Wants to make her reach out and take what she wants, show him exactly how she needs it, how much she needs him. Bellamy wants to know his girl inside and out, shine a light on all the dark and secret parts of her, no part of her hidden from him, no part of her that he doesn’t understand.

He takes her hand, pulls it down to rest on the back of his head. Baby steps. He’s got time.

Soon enough Clarke’s crying out, hips bumping into his mouth, legs tensing so he can feel her toes curling against his back. He uses his thumb on her clit, dips his tongue just inside her cunt to see how she’ll take it, and she gasps, feet suddenly scrambling against his shoulders. It’s not clear if she’s trying to push him away, bring him closer, maybe both at the same time. Bellamy goes for it, lets himself devour her the way he wants, rough and unrelenting, swallows her down, demands everything from her, and Clarke moans, her fingers finally clutching at his hair, tentatively pushing his face into her cunt. He’d smile, if his mouth wasn’t busy.

Bellamy doesn’t go in for metaphors when he’s having fucking, doesn’t need flowery language to distract himself from the glorious carnality of it. He likes the filth of good sex, the stretch of exhausted muscles, skin dripping with sweat, broken noises and heaving breaths ripped from dry throats. The filth is the point. 

Clarke’s cunt doesn’t taste like flowers, or strawberries, or roses. 

Her pussy tastes like pussy, and he fucking loves it. 

He waits until she’s mewling, a breath away from coming, and puts a finger in her, crooks it up to put firm pressure on the upper wall of her cunt. Her reaction is instant and extreme, and Bellamy only just gets his hand over her mouth in time as she wails out her orgasm, muffling the sound with his palm. 

As Clarke comes down she half-heartedly tries to push him away with her feet, but her leg muscles are weak and easy to ignore, and her hand is still on the back of his head, not letting him up. He keeps his mouth on her, not stopping until he’s stolen a second orgasm from her, a defeated moan tearing from her throat as her body shudders. 

Finally, Bellamy relents. Eases his mouth off her with a final kiss, crawls up to lie next to her. Clarke’s trembling, shivering from overstimulation, irregular aftershocks still rushing through her and making her breasts shake, her chest damp with sweat. 

Beautiful.

He kisses her forehead, trails his mouth along the bridge of her nose. She wrinkles her nose like it tickles, shyly pulls back when he tries to kiss her on the lips. He’s confused at first until he notices her eyes flick to his mouth, still shiny wet from her cunt. 

“No?” Bellamy raises his eyebrows, drops his head to lick a line up her throat, bumps her chin with his nose. “Don’t you wanna know what you taste like, baby?”

He teases her, holds himself still above her with barely a breath between their mouths, a tantalising almost-kiss that only ends when she eventually gives in, cranes her neck off the pillow to reach him.

Clarke’s timid at first, kisses him so soft he barely feels it, just a feather-light flick of her tongues across his lips before she pulls away, rolls the taste on her tongue. Each kiss is progressively harder, deeper until she’s wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down onto her, licking into his mouth to chase the lingering taste of herself, hungry for it.

“You see how good you taste?” he whispers in between filthy kisses. “Don’t know how I’m going to keep my mouth off you now, princess.”

Bellamy’s startled when Clarke pulls him on top of her, tucks her knees up against his hips. He hadn’t forgotten that he was hard - how could he, when he’s so desperate for her - but he’d set the knowledge aside to deal with later, too caught up in playing with her to think about himself. Now it rushes up on him all at once, and he finds himself at the very edge of his control, has to close his eyes and grit his teeth just to keep from completely losing it at the sensation of Clarke naked underneath him.

Clarke’s not making it easy, rubbing herself up against him, hands sneaking underneath his t-shirt to drag her nails down his back, making all these content little kitten noises of pleasure as she kisses him. He lets her pull off his t-shirt, run her fingers over his chest, tentatively rub his nipples with her thumbs, echoing what he did to her earlier, her eyes wide and almost childlike when she looks up at him to test his reaction. 

God, but he’d almost lost sight of the fact that she’s _fifteen_. When did that become the least wrong thing about this?

“That’s it,” he encourages her, can’t help but thrust against her, wishes he was inside her, would do anything to fuck her. “Jesus, Clarke.”

Bellamy stops though, when she starts to tug at his sweatpants. Pulls himself up onto his arms, takes in the sight of her, takes a deep breath to gather himself back together.

It wouldn’t be her first time. He _knows_ it wouldn’t be her first time, has first-hand experience that she’s nowhere near as innocent as she seems, that Clarke’s got dark depths to her that rival his own. But fucking her still seems significant, a step down a path that they shouldn’t be walking together with all these lies between them. 

He knows that once he fucks her, he won’t ever be able to stop, won’t be able to let her go.

“We don’t have to, princess,” Bellamy says, in a convincing impression of a reasonable man. “You know there’s no rush.”

Clarke’s eyes are clear and focused when she replies, her voice steadier than it’s been all night, sounding so much older than she is. He could almost pretend that this is okay, if he closed his eyes. “I want to.”

“Clarke…” he sighs, torn. “Baby…”

“Bellamy. Please.” She pushes herself up on her elbows and kisses him, deep and slow like she’s already learnt he likes it, lets her lips linger on his, sighs against his skin. He knows exactly what Clarke’s trying so obviously to do, all of the buttons she’s attempting to press, all the ways that she’s trying to seduce him. Knows that he’s being played. It doesn’t matter. 

He’s never been able to resist her, even when he wanted to.

Bellamy lets her pull his sweatpants down, kicks them off his feet and onto the floor. 

“We’ll go slow, okay?” he says, as much for himself as for her, a justification for something unjustifiable. “You want to stop, we stop. If it’s too much, just let me know.”

“Hmm.” Clarke’s barely listening, he can tell, already holding her arms out for him.

Next time, Bellamy will look down when Clarke shyly wraps her hand around his cock. He’ll watch her as she carefully strokes him, unsure and uneven strokes that feel better than anything he’s ever felt in his life. He’ll take his time, let her explore him as long as she wants, show her exactly what to do. 

This time, Bellamy knows it would end him, so close to coming already. So he kisses her as he pulls her hand off his cock, lines himself up, and pushes inside her. Swallows down the little shocked squeaking noise she makes, thinks he could survive off this feeling and nothing else. 

Being inside Clarke is just as mind-blowing as it was the first time. More so, when he breaks the kiss to see the look on her face, half pain, half pleasure, completely overwhelmed. Her mouth drops open on a silent moan, forehead furrowed with effort as she tries to adjust, tries to make sense of what she’s feeling. 

“I know, I know,” Bellamy whispers when Clarke whines from the stretch, her hands clenching into fists against his sides. He cradles her face in his arms, leans down to touch his mouth to hers, the nearest thing that he can manage to a kiss just now.

Clarke whimpers, her cunt fluttering around him as he pulls out, pushes back into her gently, carefully. It might not be her first time, but it’s their first time, and he’s going to take it as slow as he can, make it as good as he can for her.

“You’re doing so well,” he soothes her. He stops for a moment to let her adjust, ducks his head down to suck her nipple, tip the scales towards pleasure rather than pain. “Such a good girl for me, sweetheart.”

Bellamy starts moving again, an easy rhythm that gets Clarke melting under him gradually, her breath starting to come in little pants, hips rising to meet every thrust. He grins at her, and she smiles back tremulously, blearily, like she can’t believe how good it is. 

So different from the wild girl that rode him on the couch.

It’s not long before he dares to speed up, go a little deeper, angles his hips up to hit her where she’s really gonna feel it. Clarke moans, tits bouncing with every thrust, her ankles pressing into the small of his back as she fights to keep him in her, whines in displeasure every time he pulls out. She’s dripping wet around him now, every movement sounding slick and obscene, taking his cock so well. 

“There we go. You like that, huh?” Bellamy bottoms out inside her and grinds against her clit until she cries out, almost unbearably full of him. He threads one hand into her hair and pulls, just enough to get her head tipping back against the pillow, nips at her exposed throat with his teeth. 

“You want to know how crazy you’re making me, how good you are?” He kisses his way up to her mouth, meets her eyes with his. Clarke looks as wild as he feels, chest heaving, blonde hair a gnarled mess beneath her head, mouth red and swollen and wrecked. "How good you feel around my dick?"

It's just dirty talk - Bellamy's not expecting a response. He almost comes when she hesitantly nods, eyes falling shut like she’s embarrassed to admit it. Still shy with him, even now, with his cock inside her. 

“Yeah?”

He takes his weight onto his arms, all thoughts of being gentle leaving his mind as he slams into her and she keens, rocks her hips up frantically to meet him. She arches her back, almost coming off the mattress, her nails dug into his skin so deep he thinks she might draw blood.

“Look at me,” he begs. “Clarke, please, look at me.”

She opens her eyes for him with a moan.

“Do you want me to tell you about your perfect cunt, so wet, so - ” Bellamy leans back slightly, pulls her leg up between them so her ankle is resting on his shoulder. He groans at the new angle, the way it tightens her cunt around him, almost unbearably good. So deep inside her, like this. “So tight, babe, fuck.”

“Bell, please, I can’t,” Clarke begs, her hands quivering uselessly against his back, her head turning sideways into the pillow before she turns back to him, pupils blown wide. “It’s too much, I don’t know - ”

She’s pinned under him in this position, almost folded in half, helpless and defenceless against him. Nowhere to hide, everything she feels exposed to him, driven to a place past pain and pleasure into pure sensation, nothing left between them but skin . 

Bellamy’s not gonna last with her like this, but he’ll last long enough to get her off too.

“It’s okay,” he rasps out. “Touch yourself for me, get your hand on your clit, baby. I want you to come again for me, yeah?”

Clarke nods, bottom lip held between her teeth, fumbles her hand down between their bodies, the back of her hand against his stomach as she rubs circles into her clit. It’s not even a minute before she starts to spasm, her cunt tightening on him in waves. She gasps, presses her forehead to his, mouth hanging open like she can’t remember how to breathe.

“God, Clarke,” Bellamy groans, buries his face into her neck as he comes, can’t hold on any longer. Too late he remembers that he’s not wearing a condom, and it sends another wave of ecstasy through him, just thinking about coming inside her wet little cunt bare.

He lies on top of her afterwards, just about manages to keep his weight on his arms, mindful not to crush her beneath him even through the fog that’s clouding his brain. They kiss, slow and languid, he doesn’t know for how long, his hand cupping the side of her face, his thumb stroking across her skin, petting her like she’s something precious. 

Bellamy reluctantly eases out of her when her eyes start to fall closed, her mouth relaxing under his. She grumbles when he leaves her, not willing to let him go yet even if she’s already half asleep.

“Come here, princess.” 

Clarke murmurs, something soft and unintelligible, cheeks pink, eyes already shut, and he pulls her into his chest, curls his body around her back. She looks lazy, well fucked. He likes the look on her. Wants her like this all the time - satisfied and half asleep and in his arms. 

Thinks he’ll do anything, to keep her there.

\- 

Clarke wakes in the middle of the night. 

She doesn’t know what woke her. It’s warm and comfortable in Bellamy’s arms, his breath steadily ruffling the hairs on the back of her neck. She can’t remember her dreams, doesn’t recall any nightmares. 

It comes to her then, Octavia’s words from earlier. How her friend had looked, sugar sweet and dangerous. 

_“He’s my brother.”_

The emphasis Octavia had put on the words, stressing the middle part of the sentence like it was the only thing that mattered, possession, after all, being nine-tenths of the law.

 _"He’s_ my _brother.”_

Clarke shudders, and Bellamy shifts, his arm tightening around her.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to everyone who's valiantly trying to follow this mess! I am planning for this series to have six parts, so we're halfway there. Aiming to update every three weeks or so, but let's say every month to be safe. I am a perfectionist/completionist so even if updates are a little late, we'll get there in the end. 
> 
> Make sure you subscribe to the **series** rather than this specific story to get updates!
> 
> Really this should be a longfic rather than a series, I just screwed the pooch rather dramatically on this one *hides* 
> 
> Come shout at me on tumblr! star-sky-earth.tumblr.com


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